The Way Of The Waltons

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As a kid, Luke rarely talked at all. "I wouldn't say more than one or two words," the Los Angeles Lakers coach says. "Basketball is how I expressed myself."

He liked to imagine himself as the next Larry Bird, a player he had watched practice alongside his dad, Bill, a key member of the mid-'80s Celtics. One of Luke's most vivid memories—along with John Wooden on his lunch box, Carlos Santana at his dinner table, Phil Jackson in his daydreams and Karl Malone in his nightmares—was the time he was six years old and huddled together with his three brothers in pajamas awaiting story time. ("The boys all shared a bedroom together, even though we had seven rooms," says their mom, Susie.) Then, to their surprise, in walked Bird, who sat down and told bedtime basketball tales to a starry-eyed crowd.

"He told them how he learned to shoot by wearing socks on his hands," Susie says. Luke never developed Bird's jump shot, but he worked hard to master Bird's swagger. "On the basketball court I talked shite," Luke says.

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Bill Walton had few family rules, but he outlined them in heavy black marker on the refrigerator: NO DRINKING IN FRONT OF ME. NO BALL CAPS AT THE TABLE. He added more as issues came up. When one of the boys spotted an eight-pack of bran muffins in the kitchen and ate them all—but only the top parts—Bill returned home and wrote: EAT THE ENTIRE MUFFIN.

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Bill would leave for days at a time to work Clippers and national NBC broadcasts, so friends—or friends of friends, or sometimes even strangers—would stop by. "We had an open-door policy," Luke says. "We would be in the living room playing pool and someone would walk through the door and you've literally never seen them before, and you'd just give a head nod."

Members of the Grateful Dead might stop by for dinner one night, then Santana another. Meals were prepared on a kitchen countertop with tiles that depicted peyote and mushrooms. "Whoever was staying there became part of the family," Luke says.

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But he doesn't want to talk politics. When Luke tells stories of his playing career, he leans forward, and his voice booms: "My rookie year, we were headed to Hawaii," he begins. After an All-American career at Arizona, the Lakers drafted him onto a loaded team in 2003 that featured Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Gary Payton and Malone. "They all hated my dad for one reason or another. I'm sure he had said something about all of them. They said they were going to make my life hell."

On the flight over the Pacific, "they had an auction to see whose rookie I'd be," Walton said. "Karl Malone played $20,000 in the pot, so I was his personal rookie. Anything he wanted I was going to have to do."

But it didn't last. Malone eased up when he saw how unselfish Luke was on the court. "We got along so well. I did everything he asked," Luke says. "He was like, 'Look, we're not going to take out our feelings of your dad on you.'"

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