“I’m Billy from La Mesa… I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
Those were among the first words spoken by NBA great and always-cheerful Bill Walton to a hometown crowd of nearly 250 Thursday morning for the grand opening of a state-of-the-art gymnasium named for him at the Boys & Girls Clubs of East County.
The 10,000-square-foot La Mesa gym is the crown jewel of the Brady Family Clubhouse, just down the road from Helix High, where Walton, now 65, attended school in the 1960s with his older brother, Bruce. He starred at UCLA as a center for the Bruins basketball team, followed by a successful 14-year NBA career.