NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton dies at 71

NEW YORK -- Two-time NBA champion and NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton has passed distant pursuing a prolonged conflict with cancer, the NBA announced connected Monday.

Walton was surrounded by his family.

"Bill Walton was genuinely 1 of a kind. As a Hall of Fame player, helium redefined the halfway position," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver wrote successful a statement.

Walton was a ascendant unit successful college, starring UCLA to 2 nationalist championships and an 88-game winning streak.

In the 1973 nationalist title game, Walton scored 44 points connected 21 of 22 shooting.

He helped pb the Portland Trail Blazers to the 1977 NBA Championship and earned the NBA's Most Valuable Player honors the adjacent season.

Chronic ft and genu injuries sidelined Walton for overmuch of his career, but helium did negociate to seizure 1 much NBA rubric with the Boston Celtics successful 1986.

Walton past began a vocation successful broadcasting wherever helium entertained generations of hoops fans.

Walton primitively joined ESPN successful 2002 arsenic a pb expert for NBA games earlier shifting to assemblage hoops successful 2012. He was named 1 of the apical 50 sports broadcasters of all-time by the American Sportscasters Association successful 2009..

"But what I volition retrieve astir astir him was his zest for life," Silver said. "He was a regular beingness astatine league events - ever upbeat, smiling receptor to receptor and looking to stock his contented and warmth. I treasured our adjacent friendship, envied his boundless vigor and admired the clip helium took with each idiosyncratic helium encountered."

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Information from the NBA, ESPN and the Associated Press