Now given the chance, Bill Walker is slowly proving he belongs.
It gets tiresome after a while. Saying that making it in the League is just as much about opportunity as it is about talent. Saying that it’s all about finding the right situation to showcase your game. Still, there’s more than a kernel of truth in there. Just ask Chauncey Billups, or ask Lamar Odom, or see what Tracy McGrady remembers of his first year in Orlando.
What a difference a matter of weeks and a change of scenery can make.
The first time I spoke with Bill Walker this season was on the night of February 3, following a home victory for the Celtics over the Heat. At one point, we joked about the dunk contest, whether or not he’d ever be in one, and how Shannon Brown had an entire movement and website dedicated to getting him in the contest (disappointing outcome, to say the least). Bill hadn’t heard about this; he said he needed someone who knew about websites to make him one if there was ever going to be any sort of similar push on his behalf. That wasn’t actually the problem, though. The problem was that he was never getting the opportunity to display his dunking abilities. Or his athleticism. Or his natural scoring abilities. Or his defensive capabilities. Or, well, anything.
The 22-year-old had seen a whopping 1 minute and 45 seconds of action on the parquet in Boston’s 107-102 win that night. This game was the epitome of what I had been trying to wrap my head around for some time:
Why wasn’t Bill Walker playing?
I’m not saying that he should have been playing big minutes-just that he should have been playing some minutes. If there were ever a time for Walker to showcase his game, this would have been the night. Paul Pierce was out with a foot injury; Marquis Daniels, too, was sidelined. Ignore, for a minute, the big picture fact that the Celtics’ biggest issues were age and health (which, not coincidentally, often go hand in hand) and that Walker should have been getting somewhere around ten minutes a game to chop five or so per off of what Ray Allen and Pierce were playing. Instead, just think about this particular game. Tony Allen getting the start in Pierce’s place, logging 28 minutes and six points. Ray playing 42 minutes.
This sort of thing was status quo, so there was no real red flag or glaring question mark, other than the one that constantly lingered. It was something I had discussed with Celtic fans for some time. Many didn’t understand why the athletic 6-6 swingman wasn’t getting a shot. Certainly Doc Rivers had seen things behind the closed doors of practice that we all hadn’t. But an unreliable bench supplementing an aging and injury-plagued roster was out there for all to see. Yet, that didn’t mean the opportunities came.
No matter. As a player, it’s something you have little control over, other than the work you put in during practice and the commitment you show to winning and your teammates. Young Bill seemed to understand this.
The day after the Heat game, following practice out in nearby Waltham, a frenzy of media surrounded Paul Pierce as The Truth sat in a fold out chair by the wall. While someone from every local outlet brushed against one another hoping for the best position to grab a quote from Pierce about his injured foot, you could hear the bounce of one ball. It was Bill Walker.
“I usually come back after practice, probably at like 6:00 or 7:00 and get shots up, just trying different things,” he said after testing an array of shots that ranged from running hooks with each hand to jumpers with his left to the seemingly more game-useful strong handed jump shots and threes.
The aim was that it would all be part of the game arsenal, though-even if some of the offerings looked like nothing more than trick shots to the untrained eye. “You gotta think of new ways to score. Guys are getting so big nowadays, you know, sometimes you gotta drop it in on ‘em,” he said, smiling. Maybe some of the moves would one day come in handy, although probably not the contest he was having with Rasheed Wallace that involved banking threes from the corner. Still, though, Walker was working, learning, waiting.
“It’s tough, but you just gotta be ready. You never know what could happen. You could have more guys get injured, and then you’re playing every other game, or starting. You never know what could happen. You gotta be ready.”
After shooting around for a while, he was approached and told that he had been invited to the D-League Dunk Contest. Here was his chance to showcase. Instead, with nearly no hesitation, he declined. He wanted to go home during the All-Star break, back to West Virginia, back to his sister, his mom, and her home cooked meals. Besides, accepting would have meant an assignment in the D-League, and he wasn’t looking for that.
What a difference a matter of weeks and a change of scenery can make.
Two weeks and two hundred miles, to be exact.
When Walker was traded to the Knicks on February 18, he was looked at by most as a throw away piece in a deal whose main purpose seemed to be landing Nate Robinson in Celtics green. That’s a far cry from a few years ago, when he was a top high school recruit whose stock then soured behind three knee injuries before the time he was selected 47th in the 2008 Draft. At first, there was not much evidence to dispute this assessment of his role in the trade. Bill never got the chance to take off his warm ups during his first two games with his new team. In his third, he saw his first action as a Knick, playing twelve minutes in a return to Boston.
Game four was where things began to change. In a loss in Cleveland, Walker scored a career high 21 points in a career high 35 minutes of playing time on stellar 9-14 shooting, capped with five rebounds.
And we build.
In the team’s next game, a home bout two days later with Detroit, Walker was placed in the starting line up. The move paid dividens, as the squad got the W and Bill W flourished in his first career start, improving on career highs whose ink didn’t even have time to dry in his personal record book. A 128-104 win for the team, and 22 points on 9-13 shooting in 36 minutes for Walker.
Since the Detroit game, the former Kansas State Wildcat standout has started four of the Knicks’ next ten games, to go on top of 21 and 23 point efforts off the bench. However, there have been the one, two, and four point showings, too.
In the ever-changing world that is Mike D’Antoni’s rotation, you never know what could happen. There could be more starts, but a DNP Coach’s Decision isn’t out of the realm of possibility, and a start the night following wouldn’t be unfathomable, either (I see you, Toney Douglas).
Bill Walker is not the savior of the Knicks. Maybe he won’t even be a Knick next year, depending on whether or not Donnie Walsh decides to pick up the team option on him by early July. He’s not going to draw LeBron to Manhattan. But he’s no bench warmer, either. Now, he’s finally getting a chance to prove that.
Plus, maybe he’ll even be able to get some clips going for that website.
What a difference a matter of weeks and a change of scenery can make.
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