Bill Walton To Return To ESPN This Week

Bill Walton has been sidelined with an extreme back injury that has left him virtually motionless since the middle of April. He suffered the injury getting out of his seat on a plane, but he had an existing condition of bulging discs that just pushed it over the edge. Sign On San Diego has one of the first interviews with the ESPN analyst and he explains the injury....

So Walton was limited to being a rather large couch potato with two eyes, watching his beloved game on television, rather than in person. Talk about pain.

But there's one thing about Walton: When he sets his remarkable mind on doing something, it gets done. Just as he overcame his speech problem as a young man, he set out to ease the pain and make his body right.

There's stretching, yoga, exercising, therapy, acupuncture and, of course, one of his great loves, bicycling.

“My bike is my wheelchair, my gym and my church, all in one,” he says. “I thank my bike doctor for keeping my bike working.

“It was not the life I wanted to lead. I'm 55 and just getting started. There are so many things still to do.

“I was not getting better lying down and waiting for the pain to go away. I've gotten so much better. Thank God, it doesn't look like I'm going to have to have spinal surgery. The breakthrough for me was when I actually could bend over and pet my dog.”

It's good to hear that he's doing better and there's good news out of ESPN today as well. Walton's time on the IR is nearing a close and Big Red will be back on Sports Center this Thursday evening.

Back woes couldn't set Bill Walton back long (Sign On San Diego)