DEAD & CO SALUTE BILL WALTON AT SPHERE

Dead and Company honored decades-long Deadhead and NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton last night (5/30) during their performance at Sphere in Las Vegas, following his cancer-related death earlier this week at age 71.

To accompany the song "Fire on the Mountain," the venue's giant screens displayed several photos of Walton in his familiar tie-dyed Dead T-shirts, hanging out with band members and attending some of the reported 870 Dead concerts he saw throughout his lifetime.

“The music and the basketball were the exact same thing,” Walton wrote of how he perceived the Dead experience in his 2016 autobiography, Back From the Dead. “You have a team with a goal, and a band with a song, and fans cheering because they’re happy, but also to make the players perform better, faster, and to take everybody further.”

“Thanks for the wonderful friendship, the years of color commentary—and the Hall of Fame existence that you wore like headlights,” Dead frontman Bob Weir wrote of Walton on social media earlier this week.

Now, please excuse us while we ponder a gummy while listening to Cornell 5/8/77.