Here is a question: If a game has Bill Walton on the call but he didn’t say anything that caught your attention, did it even happen?
The former NBA Finals MVP turned sportscaster is known to say some wild things whenever he is on the air and last night was no exception. During his men’s college basketball broadcast of Oregon against USC, his play-by-play partner Dave Pasch asked him to take a trip back in time.
Considering that they were at USC (the school where Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas attended in the 1960s) for the game, Pasch asked Walton if he could confirm a rumor he heard about the films.
Bill Walton won't give Dave Pasch an answer on if he was in the mix to play Chewbacca in Star Wars.
Bill finally says that he "auditioned" to play Chewbacca, but they modeled the character after him.
This is an amazing interaction.🏀🎬🤣 pic.twitter.com/uk4rORSf1D
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 2, 2024
Pasch said he heard that Walton was “in the mix” to play Chewbacca. Here is what Walton said (and note that the transcription reflects the way the former NBA big man pronounced the name of the Wookiee):
“No. I heard that. Chewybacca is modeled after me. […] George Lucas is all cool as they get and I remember the night that George and Kareem and Bill Russell and me, we were all up in San Francisco at a big fundraiser for the Martin Luther King memorial. […] I auditioned for Chewybacca and they said no but we’re going to model the character after you.”
While it is fun to take him at his word, especially because he shared a somewhat shaggy look with Chewbacca during his playing days, we might not want to take him seriously here.
Unfortunately, this sounds like it is potentially gibberish from Walton.
Lucas is on record as saying that Chewbacca is based on his pet (via the Denver Art Museum):
“I had an Alaskan Malamute when I was writing the film [Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope]. A very sweet dog, she would always sit next to me when I was writing. And when I’d drive around, she’d sit in the front seat. A Malamute is a very large dog—like a 130 pounds and bigger than a human being and very long-haired.”
Walton was bigger than most humans and also very long-haired but he was not Lucas’ Alaskan Malamute, who was named Indiana.
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