Phoenix Suns: Neal Walk’s Life Not Defined By Draft Status
By Phil Watson
Sometimes life hands us cruel fates, situations we must bear despite them being completely beyond our control.
So it was for former Phoenix Suns center Neal Walk, who died Sunday in Phoenix at the age of 67, per The New York Times.
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Walk was the first player from the University of Florida ever to be drafted in the first round by an NBA franchise, going second overall to the Suns in the 1969 NBA Draft.
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The problem for Walk, at least from the outside looking in, is that he wasn’t Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the player drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks immediately before Phoenix selected Walk.
It was not a fate he asked for, but it was also not a fate he –pardon the pun—ever walked away from, either.
It was the flip of a coin that determined the top two picks in the NBA Draft at that time and the Bucks and Suns—the worst teams in the Eastern and Western divisions, respectively—were on the crux of history when the coin was sent airborne.
Suns general manager Jerry Colangelo made the call; heads. The coin—a 1964 John F. Kennedy half-dollar at Colangelo’s request, according to Sports Illustrated—came up tails.
The Bucks drafted Abdul-Jabbar, still known then by his birth name of Lew Alcindor, and won an NBA title in 1971, Abdul-Jabbar’s second season.
The Suns drafted Walk and made the playoffs once—in Walk’s rookie season—during the center’s five years with the franchise.
Walk was philosophical about the hand he was dealt.
“My answer on the coin toss was always, ‘I didn’t toss it and I didn’t make the call. I just play basketball,’” he told AZCentral Sports.
And it wasn’t as if Walk was a stiff who couldn’t play. He and Charles Barkley are the only players in Suns history to average at least 20 points and 12 rebounds in a season, with Walk turning the truck in 1972-73.
Walk spent his later years as a motivational speaker after losing the use of his legs after surgery in 1988 to remove a tumor from his spine.
He changed his name to Joshua Hawk in 1980, while playing a three-year stint in Israel, following a vision quest, a search for spiritual guidance and purpose.
He also played for the New Orleans Jazz and New York Knicks in an eight-year NBA career.
He spent a few days in the Caribbean, on the island of Sint Eustasius, and told Sports Illustrated the ocean whispered “Joshua” as he saw a pair of hawks circling overhead.
“It was like being bar mitzvahed, although you don’t get your cheeks pinched by your grandmother or aunts,” Walk/Hawk said. “This was a way to release myself from my singular connection to basketball. I separated me from me.”
To the rest of the NBA and the world at large, he was still Neal Walk and that was the name he used for more than three decade working for the Suns’ community relations department.
He was honored in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush as the wheelchair athlete of the year, playing wheelchair basketball for five years following his surgery and the incapacitation of his legs and he was inducted into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2006.
He also recalled his hesitation to accept an award from the Tempe (Ariz.) Sports Authority Foundation, the Gene Autry Courage Award.
“I didn’t want to accept it,” Walk recalled. “For something to be courageous, you need fear. I had no fear. What else could I do? Go in a closet? Dry up? Blow away? If I wanted to find the depth of my own soul, what better way than to be challenged? Am I the way I perceive myself or am I smoke and bulls**t?”
Neal Walk was forced to deal with the stigma of not being someone else and he handled it with a grace and aplomb that sprung from being a free spirit, able to relinquish responsibility for circumstances far beyond his control.
Childhood friend Michael Rappaport told The Times Walk was a late arrival to the free spirit movement, having spent much of the rebellious 1960s in a gym working on his game.
“He sort of missed the ’60s,” Rappaport said. “He did the ‘60s in the late ‘70s.”
Even his decision to leave the NBA and play in Italy was made unconventionally … by his dogs. He had an offer in 1977 from the Detroit Pistons and an offer to play in Venice.
“I said, ‘Fellas, Detroit or Venice?’” Walk told Sports Illustrated. “I couldn’t have a show of hands. So I said Detroit and got nothing. I said Venice and they barked.”
He was arrested in Italy when police found hashish—Walk admitted he was a drug user—at the apartment where he was staying.
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“That wasn’t even mine,” Walk said. “It was a cool experience to go to jail, though. An interesting three days.”
He wasn’t charged in the incident.
His career ended in training camp with the San Diego Clippers in 1982. He said the sound of the bouncing basketballs during two-a-day practices was giving him headaches.
“I took a six-pack and sat by the sea wall for six hours, spending time with the universe, listening,” Walk said. “Then I knew it was time.”
It may not have been a Hollywood ending, but it was a perfect one for the career of a player often forgotten and usually only remembered as not being the guy drafted before him.
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