Previous IBIC Reviews, as well as links to many other Internet information resources related to books, are available via the Internet Book Information Center (temporary Gopher address: 141.211.183.23; WWW site under construction). E-mail comments welcome to Frederick.Zimmerman@ciesin.org. %A Walton, Bill and Wojciechowski, Gene %T Nothing But Net: Just Give Me the Ball and Get Out of the Way %I Hyperion Press %C New York %D 1994 %G ISBN 1-56282-793-6 %P 257 pp. %O hardcover, U.S. $22.95 What is Bill Walton's rightful place in basketball history? You might say that the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame settled the question when it enshrined Walton on May 10, 1993. As Walton points out in his new autobiography, NOTHING BUT NET, co-written with Gene Wojciechowski, "Of all the thousands of players who have worn an NBA uniform, fewer than 60 have made it into the Hall of Fame." But, as Walton himself acknowledges in the next sentence, it is a little more complicated than that. " [W]hile it is true that I averaged only 33 games and 13.3 points during my fourteen-year professional career, nobody cherished playing ball more than I did." When Walton was fully healthy, he was one of the greatest ever; but he wasn't healthy much. Where, then, does he stand in the basketball pantheon? NOTHING BUT NET offers one answer at page 206. "I learned a lot from the books I've read on the history of basketball," Walton observes. "The best were Wilt Chamberlain's WILT--JUST LIKE ANY OTHER 7-FOOT BLACK MILLIONAIRE WHO LIVES NEXT DOOR, Bill Russell's SECOND WIND, and Jabbar's KAREEM. But no book had a greater effect on the way that I approached the game of basketball than Russell's GO UP FOR GLORY. I still have my first paperback copy of that book. The book had a profound effect on the way I approached the game and my life. ... I wanted to be just like Russell. He believed that you measured a player's success by the number of championships you won." By that standard, Walton, who won championships in high school, college, and the NBA, clearly deserves to stand in Russell's company at Hoops Valhalla; there may never have been a better college center. But what about NOTHING BUT NET as a book? Does it belong on the same shelf as GO UP FOR GLORY? When you read this book, you get the impression that Walton had harsh standards for himself. Those harsh standards explain some of Walton's more puzzling moments, like the time he gratuitously bashed the Michigan Wolverine Fab Five as "underachievers", or the times, in his early years in the NBA, that he called up the Portland Trail Blazer team owner in the night and told him he was quitting. "'I hate this,' I would say. "'I hate everything about this. This is terrible. I can't do it anymore. I quit.' Then I'd hang up the phone, toss and turn the rest of the night, unable to sleep. By daybreak, I'd call him back and rescind the previous evening's announcement." Walton continues: "One day it finally dawned on me that I wasn't the one with the problem. It was them. My teammates didn't share my love, passion, and commitment for the game. ... I stopped making those nighttime retirement calls to the owner and concentrated on changing the existing order of the Trail Blazers." If that story leaves you with a feeling that there's just a little bit missing--for example, why was Walton so critical of himself that he felt impelled to make the nighttime quitting calls in the first place--you're right. That's the failing in this book. It does not tell you enough about Bill Walton as a man. Where GO UP FOR GLORY seethes with Bill Russell's resentment at racism, NOTHING BUT NET merely simmers, because Walton leaves out the most important stuff about what makes him tick as a person. We learn almost nothing about his parents, his wife Lori, or his four sons. Another example that illustrates why Walton is not a Hall of Famer as a writer is that he mentions that he attended Stanford Law School for two years, but never says anything more, and never explains why he didn't finish. Compare that to Scott Turow, an occasional All-Star of a writer, who parlayed just one year at Harvard into his perennial best-seller ONE-L. Walton performs better when it comes to writing about basketball--especially in his portrayal of John Wooden's greatness--but there are still some irritating omissions. For example, Walton gives very short shrift to the Trail Blazer championship in 1977, without which he would not be in the Hall of Fame, and completely skips over the years from 1977 to 1984. He gives a lot more attention to the 1986 season, where he was only a sub to the best frontcourt in basketball history, Bird, McHale, and Parish. Was he even the best sixth man in basketball history? It's hard to say he was better than John Havlicek. ("HAVLICEK STOLE THE BALL! HAVLICEK STOLE THE BALL!") Paradoxically, though, Walton is a better writer when he talks about those 1986 Celtics. In particular, the chapter on Larry Bird conveys Bird's greatness better than any other basketball book I have read. And when Walton talks about his basketball "Dream Team," he's completely convincing. The 1992 Olympic Dream Time "was a nice collection of players, but an All-Time Dream Time lineup would require quite a few roster changes. For instance, Christian Laettner . . . gone." What finally resolved NOTHING BUT NET's status on my basketball bookshelf was not Walton's mixed prowess as a writer, but a photograph, just preceding page 147, of Walton; Bill Russell; Shaquille O'Neal; Wilt Chamberlain; and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, gathered round a seated John Wooden. (The caption reads: "Wilt asked, 'Okay, Coach Wooden, we're all here, now who gets to start?' Wooden's immediate response: "Well, is there anyone here who won three NCAA championships?'" ) When you look at the photograph, you notice that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a good three inches taller than Wilt, and that Shaquille O'Neal is very, very, very strong. But the most interesting thing about the photograph is that when you look at it, you realize that Bill Walton belongs there.