Bill Walton

"I’ve had 37 orthopedic operations. I ground my feet up into dust. I’ve got a new knee. I‘ve got a new spine. I’m the lucky one... I never thought going through all of it that I would be healthy at the end. And I almost wasn’t."

"As usual, the vegetarian tiger played as if he had dined on red meat all week: as if he had slept sweetly and spent all his waking hours on the practice court: as if his knees were made of steel cables; as if his only icons were the ball and the hoop."

"The nights those guys aren't going good and Bill Walton's needed to do something else, he'll do that. He's the most unselfish star player I ever saw [']."

"When future basketball Hall-of-Famer Bill Walton was winning NBA championships for the Portland Trail Blazers and others, he was the best-known vegetarian in sports. A 1974 Time magazine article dubbed him “Basketball’s Vegetarian Tiger.” But folks wondered how he had such stamina without eating meat. He answered critics saying the vegetarian diet made him stronger. A recent study 40-some years later bolsters his claim."