Basketball’s nuttiest, wildest, craziest players.

When I was a kid my dad used to tell me the reason NBA superstar center Bill Walton, then with the Boston Celtics, got so many foot fractures was because he was a vegetarian. The big redhead, with his long hair, headband, surfer-speak, and reverence for the Grateful Dead, was the closest thing to a hippie in professional sports — and my dad didn’t like hippies. But since he was a Celtics fan, and respected Walton’s talents, he couldn’t bring himself to call Big Red a counterculture dope — which is what he would have called him had Walton done anything else but play for a Boston sports team.

Seventies Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee got the same pass, and Lee — like Walton, from California — is... Read More