William Theodore "Bill" Walton III (born November 5, 1952) is a retired American basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 player

Player (game)

A player of a game is a participant therein. The term 'player' is used with this same meaning both in game theory and in ordinary recreational games....

 and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 sportscaster

Sportscaster

In sports broadcasting, a commentator gives a running commentary of a game or event in real time, usually during a live broadcast. The comments are normally a voiceover, with the sounds of the action and spectators also heard in the background. In the case of television commentary, the commentator...

. The "Big Red-Head", as he was called, achieved superstardom playing for John Wooden

John Wooden

John Robert Wooden was an American basketball player and coach. Nicknamed the "Wizard of Westwood", he won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period — seven in a row — as head coach at UCLA, an unprecedented feat. Within this period, his teams won a record 88 consecutive games...

's powerhouse UCLA Bruins

UCLA Bruins

The UCLA Bruins are the sports teams for University of California, Los Angeles . The Bruin men's and women's teams participate in NCAA Division I as part of the Pacific-12 Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation . For football, they are in the Football Bowl Subdivision of Division I...

 in the early '70s, winning three straight College Player of the Year Awards, while leading the Bruins to two Division I national titles

NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship

The NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship is a single-elimination tournament held each spring in the United States, featuring 68 college basketball teams, to determine the national championship in the top tier of college basketball...

. He then went on to have a prominent career in the National Basketball Association

National Basketball Association

The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...

 (NBA) where he was a league Most Valuable Player (MVP) and won two NBA championships.