Bill Walton, a Hall of Fame NBA center who won two league championships, died of cancer, the NBA announced on Monday. He was 71 years old.

Walton was selected No. 1 overall by the Portland Trail Blazers in the 1974 NBA draft after finishing his college career under legendary coach John Wooden at UCLA, where he helped push the Bruins to a remarkable 88-game winning streak and two national championships. The 6-foot-11 center won an NBA championship with the Trail Blazers in 1977 and was also awarded the Finals MVP. Nine years later, Walton won another NBA championship with the Boston Celtics.

After he retired from the NBA, Walton became a basketball commentator for multiple networks, beginning with CBS in 1990 before moving to ABC/ESPN, where he worked as an NBA analyst until stepping away for a short time in 2009. Walton got back behind the microphone in 2012 as a college basketball analyst for ESPN and the Pac-12 Conference, calling games through the 2023-2024 season. The American Sportscasters Association named Walton one of the top 50 sports broadcasters of all time in 2009.

“Bill Walton was truly one of a kind,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement, according to ESPN. “As a Hall of Fame player, he redefined the center position. His unique all-around skills made him a dominant force at UCLA and led to an NBA regular-season and Finals MVP, two NBA championships and a spot on the NBA’s 50th and 75th Anniversary Teams.”

“Bill then translated his infectious enthusiasm and love for the game to broadcasting, where he delivered insightful and colorful commentary which entertained generations of basketball fans,” Silver added. “But what I will remember most about him was his zest for life. He was a regular presence at league events – always upbeat, smiling ear to ear and looking to share his wisdom and warmth. I treasured our close friendship, envied his boundless energy and admired the time he took with every person he encountered.”

Over the weekend, Bill Maher, the host of HBO’s “Real Time,” told Fareed Zakaria of CNN that the ideas of leftists are “stupid.”

Maher appeared on CNN to promote his new book, “What This Comedian Said Will Shock You.”

Zakaria noted that in the book, Maher wrote, “Some people think I’ve changed. I assure you I have not. I’m still the same unmarried, childless, pot-smoking libertine I always was. I have many flaws, but you can’t accuse me of maturing.” He asked what Maher would say to people who say they love him but that he’s become “cranky” and “crotchety,” that he has become one of those old guys who says “the kids are crazy.”

“They’re wrong, “ Maher responded bluntly. “I mean, they’re wrong and the kids are crazy. It’s interesting, they have this idea the younger generation, maybe every generation does, that just because something is new makes it better and that’s not true. New is not synonymous with better.”

“You’re just sounding like an old-fashioned conservative,” Zakaria accused.

“I heard a couple of people say, or maybe they wrote it online that, well, I’m a hypocrite because you were for the demonstrators in 1968 or whatever it was when they were demonstrating against the Vietnam War,” Maher said. “Yes, that was very different. First of all, the students weren’t against their own. These students were threatening other students. That didn’t happen in the Vietnam War.  And being against the Vietnam War made sense. It was a war that we probably should not have been in. … This is demonstrating and protesting for a terrorist group, I mean, Hamas is –”

“Well, to be fair, a lot of students — there were a lot of outside, you know, people have mixed together what students are doing, what outside protesters are doing,” Zakaria interjected. “But let me ask you a broader question, which is, a lot of people will say, look, this is how you get change. You — it’s noisy. Some people say the wrong thing. Some people go too far. But the whole tradition of this kind of expansion of rights, it’s messy, it’s chaotic.”

“You know, yes, we’re — you know, there’s probably a bunch of excesses as there were probably was in the ’60s,” Zakaria continued. “There was the Black Panthers and the Weathermen and things like that. But they think of you as somebody who was, you know, you were okay with all that, but you’ve turned.”

“I haven’t turned,” Maher answered. “Yes, people have said to me, you make fun of the Left more than you used to, and guilty. I have because the Left has changed.”

He segued to attacking the Right and Donald Trump: “Now, the Right has changed also, and even worse. I mean, the right doesn’t believe in democracy anymore. I mean, they’ve thrown their lot in with the sociopath named Donald Trump, who only thinks elections count when we win. Okay, well, that’s worse.”

“But it’s not like the Left hasn’t changed also,” he admitted. “So I’m going to call it out wherever I see it. I mean, there are things that have to do with, you know, gender and race and free speech, and just ideas about, you know, you can be healthy at any weight and gender is always a social construct and maybe we should give communism another try and maybe we should get rid of capitalism and the Border Patrol. And let’s tear down statues of Lincoln and get rid of the police. Just, you know, know, no. It’s not that I’ve gotten old, it’s that your ideas are stupid.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP

Maher spoke of former President Ronald Reagan: “Famously, he used to have a drink at the end of the day, often, with Tip O’Neill, who is the leader in the House and a Democrat. But they were just two Irish pals who get together and have a scotch at the end of the day. And they knew they weren’t going to get along on many issues, but they didn’t hate each other. They could drink together. That is inconceivable today. Can you imagine Joe Biden having a drink with Mike Johnson? It just would never happen. When you hate people, you don’t listen to them. So, it doesn’t matter how reasonable they might be.”

“We have reached this place where each side thinks the other side is an existential threat. You hear that term from both sides all the time. That is just a terrible place to be. Because we find ourselves in this situation where both sides are literally siding with enemies of America rather than the opposition party within the country.”