It never ceases to amaze one that network sports continue to employ loud-mouthed liberal loons like Bill Walton and Charles Barkley. Barkley has been embarrassing himself on TNT's Inside The NBA for years, and Walton does likewise calling college basketball on ESPN, openly advocating against the war on drugs and glorifying pot use.
While doing (off) color commentary for the Colorado-Oregon college basketball game on ESPN last week, frequent weed advocate Walton didn't stick solely to sports. He went off about pot. Again.
As the game was nearing a commercial break, Walton (at left in above photo) demanded that someone “Get me some grass!” Mark Jackson, who was on the broadcast crew, asked Walton, “What kind of grass do you want?”:
“I want Oregon grass! In Oregon, when you live here as I did for five years… what do you all the time… is you cut firewood and you cut the grass. And then you gotta get rid of both of those, so you use them all.”
The second half had barely begun when Walton suggested the Colorado University team had gotten high at halftime. “Great offensive rebounding here by the Buffaloes! Looks like they had some good grass at halftime.”
Walton may have been smoking weed himself, because late in the game he completely abandoned the reality of what was happening in front of him between Colorado and Oregon and began play-calling an imaginary Indiana Pacers game from the year 2000:
“Now this is where a champion shines! This is Mark Jackson bringing the ball up the court. He’s got Chris Mullin on one side. He’s got Reggie Miller on the other. He’s got Rik Smits down low. He’s got Dale Davis at the weakside high post. Can they score? Slick Bobby Leonard, the Hall of Famer, with the call. Here it is, the play, the shot clock running down. Everybody’s running away from it, please! Can the Pacers get to the NBA Finals?!”
Awful Announcing writer Matt Clapp dug Walton's bizarre act:
"Unlike any other broadcast in the universe, but just another day in Walton’s World."
Three years ago, Yahoo! Sports found it annoying that, during an ESPN broadcast of a Cal-UCLA game, Walton made it well known how much he enjoys getting high on marijuana. Dave Lozo wrote: "They have to let you know at every turn that they enjoy it. It becomes their identity. ... ESPN should just let Walton call all the Portland Trailblazers games and get it over with. Just two hours of weed references."
In 2015, Walton dropped the gloves and called on then President Barack Obama to come forward and end the war on drugs:
“The War on Drugs has been an absolute failure across the board and somebody’s got to step forward and we’re looking for Obama to step up and say, ‘why are we punishing people for things that are legal?’ ‘Why are people languishing in jail for things that are legal?’ Look at the front page of the Register-Guard right here in Eugene, addressing that same exact point.”
Those comments were predictably celebrated by a blog called "weednews." Aside from this bookmark for potheads, why is ESPN allowing the Deadhead looney-tunes lefty Walton to keep glorifying drug use on ESPN year after year? As Lozo noted with his disgust, it's getting old and ESPN's college basketball broadcasts should stick to college hoops.
