Walton, Meyers Take UCLA Connection to Hall of Fame : Basketball: One limps into Springfield, the other helps erase the word <i> tomboy</i> from the vernacular.

By MARK HEISLER

May 11, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Julius Erving made the basketball Hall of Fame on showmanship.

Walt Bellamy made it on numbers.

Bill Walton made it on love.

Walton, who averaged 33 games in the 14 seasons he spent on NBA rosters, who never averaged 20 points as a pro, went in Monday with Erving, after the minimum five years out of the game.

Also inducted were Ann Meyers, a UCLA All-American; Calvin Murphy, a 5-foot-9 guard for the San Diego and then Houston Rockets; Dan Issel, a former workhorse-star and now coach of the Denver Nuggets; Uljana Semenova, a 7-foot Latvian star of the Soviet women’s juggernaut of the ‘70s; Dick McGuire, a Knick star in the ‘50s; and Bellamy, who retired in 1975 as the game’s third-leading scorer after playing for six teams in 14 seasons.

Walton attended the pre-induction news conference wearing a big smile, a suit and his trademark sneakers.

It took Bellamy 20,941 points to get here.

It took Walton 30 operations.

“I go from chair to chair, and I’m very glad I have a chair right now,” Walton said. “Some days are worse than others. I can’t put hard shoes on. My feet swell all the time.

“Yes I do pay for it, but it was a price well worth it. I loved the game of basketball. I loved the competition. . . . If given the chance, I would do it all over again because it’s special.

“It was painful in that I did not accomplish more. My career is one of frustration and disappointment, which makes today even more special, because everyone else here has the career numbers, the career statistics, career accomplishments to back up their being here. I really don’t.

“But again, I’m here and I’m not going to say no. I’m not going to say no thanks. I’m going to say thank you ever so much.”

Walton played on teams that won NCAA titles in 1971-72 and ‘72-73, his first two varsity seasons at UCLA, and an NBA title at Portland in ‘76-77.

Nine seasons later--three of which he missed entirely, plus a fourth in which he played only 14 games--he played on his last championship team as a Celtic backup center.

Nevertheless, Walton is still considered one of the game’s great big men, and by some as the most highly developed and fundamentally sound center ever.

“I was incredibly lucky in that I grew up in Southern California during the peak of John Wooden’s success,” he said.

“I started playing basketball in 1960, and UCLA, even though they had not started winning championships at that time, they were getting very close.

“John Wooden was an energetic and tireless teacher and promoter of the game. Every coach I ever played for was preaching the John Wooden style of basketball, which was fundamentals, fast-break offense keyed by pressure man-to-man defense. So I grew up with a very solid foundation. . . .

“I remember the first day we got there, he came in the locker room. We were six high school All-Americans coming in. We thought we were just great. We couldn’t wait to get out on the court. He came in, sat us all down and showed us how to put our socks on. Showed us how to tie our pants so they wouldn’t fall down. Showed us how to tuck our shirts in so they would never come out. Showed us how to adjust our wrist bands. . . .

“And then we went out onto the court. And he showed us how to win jump balls. And he took us through every step. We learned how to play the game of basketball.

“He did all his coaching in practice. When the games came, he would walk in there for the pregame meetings, which were very, very short. There was no strategy. He’d walk in and say, ‘Men, I’ve done my job, the rest is up to you.’ And then he’d go and sit down and we’d go out and play.”

Walton, rarely quoted in his Bruin and Trail Blazer days, is now an NBA announcer. He does games for the Clippers and Dallas Mavericks, is one of the NBC “insiders” and picks up any other work he can find, including this year’s Continental Basketball Assn. playoffs in Grand Rapids, Mich.

He did think he might make the Hall of Fame.

The rest of it never occurred to him.

“When you’re a basketball player, you think you can do anything,” Walton said. “But for me, a kid who had a severe speech impediment, who could not speak, who could not communicate at all, to even think that I could sit here today and answer questions--that is so far beyond the realm of my dreams.

“When I was in college, I was an outstanding student, an academic All-American, graduated with honors in 3 1/2 years. I’d win all these honors for college player of the year, and they’d want me to go to all these banquets and speak and I would tell them, ‘I’m not coming.’

“And John Wooden would say, ‘You’ve got to go.’

“And I would tell him, as I would stutter along, ‘I will only go if I don’t have to say a word, and you get up and say everything. I can’t even get up there and say thank you.’ And for me to now sit there on television, make my living speaking, it’s unbelievable.”

Meyers is married to Don Drysdale, former Dodger pitching star, and they form the first Hall of Fame couple.

For Meyers, it was an honor for more reasons that that.

One of 11 children of a college basketball player who settled his family in La Habra, she grew up in the ‘70s when women’s participation was anything but accepted.

“You’re a tomboy growing up and things are said about you,” Meyers said. “You go home crying a lot.

“Sports was like a taboo thing for girls to get in. There was still an image problem and people saying things. And when you’re a young kid, you don’t know what they’re saying or what they mean or anything like that. I remember the first time, I was like a junior in high school, and someone thought I was gay. I didn’t know what it meant--they didn’t use that word--and I went home crying.”

Meyers couldn’t imagine playing at a large school, figuring the best she would do was a small Baptist school in Plainview, Tex.

To her surprise, she was offered a scholarship at UCLA. She grabbed it and played on the Bruins’ 1977-78 championship team.

“Seventy-five, my freshman year, was the last year Coach Wooden was there, when they won the national championships,” Meyers said.

“My brother, David, was a senior. I think the media really took off on the human interest story, not only for ourselves but for women’s basketball in general. Because they would not have received the attention if I had not gone to UCLA, the whole mystique about UCLA.

“I think the biggest (change) is the attitude. You’ve got more fathers involved with their daughters. . . . The attitudes have changed to be more positive. You don’t hear the terminology tomboy that much any more. And it’s OK for girls to play sports.”