Oregon State was coming to town for an important game, so U.C.L.A. Center Bill Walton prepared in typical fashion. He began each day with his regular breakfast diet of yogurt, cottage cheese, nuts, cereal, raisins, seeds and honey. He rode his ten-speed bicycle to the beach and contemplated the Pacific. He took his weekly acupuncture treatment: needles in the ears or legs to relieve pain from tendinitis in his knees. On the night before the game, he stayed up until 2 a.m. working on his latest cause—organizing campus opposition to a proposed experimental program for modifying the behavior of criminals by brain surgery. Finally, he put in a half-hour of Transcendental Meditation, chanting his mantra in solitude.
William Theodore Walton (known on his fans' banners as WILLIAM THE GREAT or WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR) was ready at last for a little serious basketball. As usual, the vegetarian tiger played as if he had dined on red meat all week; as if he had slept sweetly and spent all his waking hours on the practice court; as if his knees were made of steel cables; as if his only icons were the ball and the hoop.
Bruin boosters roared their pleasure as their hero gathered in lob passes, then levitated his lanky, 6 ft. 11 in. frame and dropped the ball delicately downward for a basket. At the opposite end of the court, Walton planted himself in front of Oregon State shooters like a giant redwood tree, branches stretching toward the ceiling. Near the end of the game, when Oregon State surged to within three points of U.C.L.A., Walton responded with a torrent of shots and rebounds that kept the Bruins in the lead. For his efforts that evening early this month: 31 points, 19 rebounds, and an 80-75 U.C.L.A. victory.
With that kind of overpowering skill, Walton has become the most successful college athlete of his generation. His achievements, by now, are legion and legend: his team ran up the longest winning streak in college history (88 games); counting an unexpected loss to Oregon State in a rematch with that school last Friday night, U.C.L.A. has lost just twice in three years of Walton's varsity play; it has won two N.C.A.A. championships and a third is expected next month. Walton himself has a personal won-lost record of 148-2 (reaching back to his junior year in high school), and several multimillion-dollar offers to turn pro after his junior year. Even for Coach John Wooden, who has made winning as common as Los Angeles smog, the Walton era has been sui generis.
As if his stats were not enough, Walton, 21, seems intent on shattering every jock stereotype. He is serious about his studies (history major, solid B-plus average), radical in his politics, reclusive in his lifestyle, contemptuous of money and luxury. So fierce is his sense of individualism that he says that he will not turn pro when he gets his diploma next month unless he can play in Southern California. "Living," he says, "is more important than playing."