Back from the Dead

In February 2008, Bill Walton's spine collapsed so badly that he could not get up, the culmination of a lifetime of injuries; across fourteen NBA seasons he had missed more games than he played. He spent most of the next three years lying flat, in excruciating pain, and he seriously considered suicide. The memoir sets his injury and recovery against his basketball career. Raised in southern California in the 1950s, Walton was shaped by the turmoil of the 1960s and identified strongly with the counterculture, above all its music, including the Grateful Dead. Outside his family, his greatest influence was John Wooden, his coach at UCLA, with whom he spoke every day for forty-three years until Wooden died at ninety-nine.

Legends and Losers podcast host Christopher Lochhead named it in an interview among the books he would recommend to young people interested in his career path.