As Kandinsky was able to express music through painting, Bill Walton expressed music through basketball. Like synethesia where basketball is a means of musical expression and 5 players interact like a band on the same page. . .like the Grateful Dead (of course)
Injury-wrecked career but he was responsible for artistic peaks of the sport in the early 70s UCLA and 77 Blazers, and then he played a key role on the 86 Celtics.
And his distillation of old school John Wooden through counterculture psychedelic mindset is hugely significant.