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Great Athletes of the Twenty-First Century

Luke Walton

by Joy Crelin

Born: March 28, 1980

San Diego, California, United States

Also known as: Luke Theodore Walton (full name)

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BASKETBALL

Golden State Warriors assistant coach Luke Walton has basketball in his blood. The son of veteran basketball player Bill Walton, who followed a successful career with the San Diego Clippers and Boston Celtics with more than two decades as a prominent sportscaster, Walton established himself as a talented player early in life, amassing impressive statistics during his years playing for the University of Arizona. His success playing for the Los Angeles Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers provided further proof that Walton is not only his father’s son but also a talented player in his own right. “Luke is one of these people who was born with an innate understanding of the game of basketball,” Bob Myers, the general manager of the Golden State Warriors, explained to Diamond Leung for the Bay Area News Group (4 Oct. 2015).

Walton’s most impressive accomplishments, however, have perhaps come not on the basketball court but beside it: in the role of coach. Hired as an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors in 2014, he stepped up to the position of interim head coach in late 2015 when head coach Steve Kerr took a leave of absence for medical reasons. Walton led the team in a record-breaking start to the 2015–16 season. Despite this impressive achievement, Walton has expressed that he tends to emphasize his strong working relationships with his players rather than his own personal efforts. “Players expect honesty, and as long as we have a relationship and they feel that I’m not trying to get anything over on them, I can be laid-back, and then I can still pull them aside and tell them that they’re messing up, that they need to do something better,” he told Leung. “They respect it, and they respond to it.”

Early Life

Luke Theodore Walton was born on March 28, 1980, in San Diego, California. The third of four sons born to Bill and Susie Walton, Walton spent his early years in southern California where his father played professional basketball. Bill Walton had begun his National Basketball Association (NBA) career with the Portland Trail Blazers and at the time of Walton’s birth was playing for the San Diego Clippers; he went on to play for the Boston Celtics and, after retiring from the sport in 1987, began a second career as a sports commentator.

Growing up as the son of a championship winner and respected sportscaster was sometimes difficult, but it also had its perks: Walton has recalled in interviews that some of his strongest childhood memories involve attending his father’s games and meeting famed players such as Larry Bird. “I don’t think every kid would enjoy the childhood that I had, but I loved the childhood I had,” he told Mary Schmitt Boyer for Cleveland.com (25 Mar. 2013). “We had freedom, but we had discipline. It was a little chaotic over there. But I enjoyed that. I wouldn’t trade it.” Basketball was a key part of life for Walton and his brothers, even after they moved in with their mother following their parents’ divorce, and all four boys enjoyed playing the game. Nevertheless, their father sought to ensure that they never felt pressured to pursue the sport professionally. “Obviously, he knew more about the type of pressure we were going to be having being his kids,” Walton explained to Boyer. “But he’d ask you if you wanted advice on the game. Sometimes you were mad and you didn’t want to hear it from your dad. Other times you’d say yes and he’d break down what he saw and what he thought you should work on. But he’d always ask you first and he’d always make the point of telling us that it was our lives and not to feel obligated to play basketball.”

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Walton attended the University of San Diego High School, where he was considered for the varsity basketball team early on. Walton’s father, with whom he lived during that period, encouraged the coach to place the teenage Walton on the junior varsity team instead. Walton filled the position of point guard on the junior varsity team and later went on to play varsity basketball, helping his team obtain a state title during his senior year. After graduating from high school in 1998, Walton enrolled in the University of Arizona (UA), from which he earned his bachelor’s degree in 2003. He continued to play basketball at the university, joining the school’s Arizona Wildcats. A prolific player, Walton ranked in first place in the Pacific-10 Conference for number of games played two seasons in a row. He ultimately scored more than 1100 points for the Wildcats over the course of his four-year career and in his senior year aided the Wildcats in becoming regular-season Pac-10 champions.

The Road to Excellenvce

Walton’s professional basketball career began in June 2003 when he was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in the second round of that year’s NBA draft. Entering the world of professional basketball had some unexpected consequences for Walton, who, as the son of a sports commentator who never shied away from criticizing players when necessary, faced some scrutiny for his father’s comments. “Sometimes I had teammates’ moms come up to me and tell me, ‘Tell your dad to leave my son alone,’” he recalled to Boyer. “I was like, ‘Listen I can’t control that man. He’s going to do what he does.’” Although he occasionally faced some uncomfortable conversations with teammates’ families, Walton soon came to be seen as a player in his own right rather than Bill Walton’s son, and his teammates opted to treat Walton differently because of his father’s at-times critical words.

Walton made his debut with the Lakers on October 28, 2003, playing for seven minutes in the season’s opening game in which the Lakers ultimately defeated the Dallas Mavericks by sixteen points. After playing as a power forward during the 2003–4 season, he later transitioned into the role of small forward, filling that position throughout much of his professional career. Walton remained with the Lakers for nearly a decade and played for the team into early 2012. During his tenure with the Lakers, the team won the NBA Finals two years in a row, in 2009 and 2010.

In March of 2012, the Lakers traded Walton to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Returning to the position of power forward, he played for the team from March 2012 to April 2013. Following the end of the 2012–13 season, Walton retired from play but not from professional basketball, transitioning into the role of coach.

Walton first developed an interest in coaching in 2010 when a pinched nerve in his back sidelined him for much of the season. During that period, doctors cautioned Walton that he might not be able to continue playing basketball at a professional level if he did not recover fully, a concept that left Walton distressed. Aware of Walton’s difficulties, Lakers coach Phil Jackson stepped in and encouraged Walton to become more involved in the coaching side of the sport. “Phil saw that I was pretty depressed and he invited me in to start hanging out with his coaching staff that season,” he told Ben Golliver for Sports Illustrated (9 Nov. 2015). “He had me tracking plays on the bench with the staff. For the first time, I had to think about what I would do if I couldn’t play basketball any more. I really enjoyed what Phil and his staff were doing. I thought it might be something I wanted to do once it was all said and done.”

The 2011 NBA lockout, a six-month contract dispute prompted by the expiration of the league’s previous collective bargaining agreement, provided Walton with his first opportunity to work as a coach, and he took a position with the University of Memphis (UM) during that period. When he retired from the Cavaliers in late 2013, he was hired as a player development coach for the Los Angeles D-Fenders, a minor-league basketball team affiliated with the Lakers. Walton was tasked with developing talented players with the goal of preparing them to join major-league basketball teams one day.

The Emerging Champion

The following summer, Walton joined the Golden State Warriors, a professional team based in Oakland, California, as an assistant coach. He approached the position with an open mind. “I didn’t really have expectations,” he told Tim Kawakami for the Mercury News blog Talking Points (19 May 2015). “I came in, I told [head coach Steve Kerr] I wanted to be as involved as possible; I wasn’t going to come in and overstep any boundaries. I was just going to kind of watch how things played out and do what was asked of me until I kind of felt the groove of what they wanted and what was going to be my role.”

In October 2015, Walton’s role with the team shifted dramatically when Kerr took a leave of absence following back surgery and named Walton interim head coach. In that position, Walton led the Warriors to significant success in the beginning of the 2015–16 season when the team achieved a twenty-four-game winning streak that did not end until December. Although Walton filled the role of head coach during the Warriors’ incredible autumn, NBA regulations stipulated that Kerr would be credited for the success as the team’s official head coach. Although fans objected to the policy and argued that Walton should be recognized for his leadership, the interim coach focused more on the collaborative efforts of the entire team than his own contributions. “I’m completely okay with the fact that the wins don’t count on any record book for me,” he told Golliver. “Our concern here is getting the wins and the team continuing to get better while Steve isn’t able to coach. It’s an atmosphere that was built when he got here: none of us are out here doing it for credit, none of us are out here doing it for ourselves. It’s what we’re trying to accomplish as a group.”

Walton remained interim coach for the Warriors until January 2016 when Kerr returned from his leave of absence. Having demonstrated his capabilities as a head coach, Walton became the focus of much attention during the months, with numerous commentators speculating about whether he would take a head coach position with another team following the end of the 2015–16 NBA season, and if so, which team.

Summary

While attending the University of Arizona, Walton met Bre Ladd, a varsity volleyball player. The two began dating several years later and married in 2013. They live in California.

Additional Sources

1 

Boyer, Mary Schmitt. “Cleveland Cavaliers Forward Luke Walton: The Most Interesting Man in the NBA?” Cleveland.com . Advance Ohio, 25 Mar. 2013. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.

2 

Golliver, Ben. “Luke Walton Q&A: Warriors’ Dominant Start, Filling in for Steve Kerr and More.” Sports Illustrated. Time, 9 Nov. 2015. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.

3 

Kawakami, Tim. “Luke Walton on the Warriors’ Coaching Staff: ‘We Don’t Want to Act Like We’re Stressed or Freaking Out.’” Talking Points. Mercury News, Bay Area News Group, 19 May 2015. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.

4 

Killion, Ann. “Warriors Youngest Coach Luke Walton with Big Responsibility.” SFGATE. Hearst Communications, 25 Mar. 2015. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.

5 

Leung, Diamond. “Luke Walton, Suddenly Warriors Interim Coach, Has Basketball Pedigree.” Mercury News. Digital First Media, 4 Oct. 2015. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.

6 

“NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton Talks about Luke, John Wooden.” SFGATE. Hearst Communications, 2 Apr. 2016. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Crelin, Joy. "Luke Walton." Great Athletes of the Twenty-First Century,Salem Press, 2018. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Ath21C_0445.
APA 7th
Crelin, J. (2018). Luke Walton. Great Athletes of the Twenty-First Century. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Crelin, Joy. "Luke Walton." Great Athletes of the Twenty-First Century. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2018. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.