According to Bill Walton, Oregon is pretty good

Everything I know about the Oregon Ducks basketball team, unfortunately, I know because of Bill Walton.

Which, yes, means, I don’t know much.

That’s the curse of being a Bill Walton fan.

Walton is an acquired taste. Either you love him, because of his folksy humor, or loathe him, as a distraction.

I love him. The folksy stuff works for me.

I’m not watching Pac 12 basketball at 10 p.m. Eastern because I’m that much of a basketball junkie.

I’m fighting sleep, looking to be entertained.

Which is why, Thursdays and Saturdays from January through March, I’m tuned in.

I was happy to hear Walton pitch Barack Obama as the next coach at UCLA, if only because that means UCLA won’t make a pitch at Tony Bennett.

The one Oregon game I remember him doing this year is the one everybody else remembers because he kept talking about how he’d been an extra in the 1984 movie “Ghostbusters,” which nobody had known about until he said it that night.

Augusta Free Press coverage of the 2019 postseason is presented by Bear Creek. Serving Waynesboro, Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and surrounding communities, Bear Creek provides a hassle-free process to help homeowners create outdoor living spaces that bring people together. Schedule a consultation at BearCreek.co.

I did a quick Google search for “bill Walton oregon ducks basketball,” and came up with one other anecdote, about how he sought out Ducks sophomore Kenny Wooten after that game, and encouraged him to be more aggressive on offense, and how that had apparently been a spark for Wooten, which, yeah, awesome, thanks, Bill.

That’s the part that the haters don’t get about Walton. He’ll eat a cupcake with a lit candle on it, he’ll depart from courtside before an overtime to go to the men’s room and stroll back as the game is going on without missing a beat otherwise, but, come on, dude knows basketball.

He also happens to know that Arizona is the sixth largest state by land mass, and isn’t afraid to share that he knows that on a live broadcast.

(Disclaimer: I haven’t verified that Arizona is whatever largest state by land mass, and don’t really know how one would go about measuring states by land mass. Though, it sounds damn impressive, as a factoid.)

The thing bothering me now is, I watched so much Pac 12 basketball this winter, and I don’t remember a second of what went on during the games, because I was mainly tuning in to hear what Bill had to say.

I’m pretty sure Oregon is good. The Pac 12, according to Bill, is the Conference of Champions. Should be a tough game for UVA on Thursday night, then.

Column by Chris Graham