(And if, perchance, you're too young to remember...no, I'm not joking).
Walton is a paradigmatic example of how the party on the left became the party on the right, or how the counter culture became the status quo. He's now a respected, "mainstream" sports/media personality, and he's still just a lefty that occasionally spices his observations with political commentary. We all got fooled again.
I remember seeing him and the Trailblazers in New Orleans in 1973. He was sitting out the year with a bad foot, I think, and Sydney Wicks was carrying the team on his back. Pistol Pete Maravich shot the lights out of the basket that night and put on a dribbling display that I've never seen equaled. Walton was booed lustily as he loped off the court like Treebeard in his blue jeans, long hair and hippie headband.
He was a good buddy of the SLA's married white couple--I forget their names--the Scotts? They were the ones who Patty Hearst was with when she sprayed the sporting goods store (she was ripping off of white socks) with machine gun bulets in LA. It was ironic that DeFreeze and the other Soledad jailbirds were torched in their hideout while the spoiled whitey rich kids who alerted the police to their whereabouts lived.
Walton, like Hanoi Jane, never paid for his indiscretions. He just went on to win the Championship in '77 (I think), and even got to play in Celtic green at the twilight of his career. Go figure.
Now he's an inane oracle with lefty ideas and Brooks Brother's suits, and he's still making a fortune. Maybe he should team up with Marv Albert.
I remember Pres.Ford asking his advisors to help him locate the nation of Symbio on the map!