Former Gopher Walter Bond with the Utah Jazz.
The Career That Was is a new GopherHole series dedicated to digging up the professional careers, both major and minor, of former Gophers players. Last week we took a look at the career of Courtney James. Have a Gopher with a pro career you want to see written up here? Tell me about it in the comments below.
One of Clem Haskins’ first big recruits at Minnesota, Walter Bond came to the U of M as an All-State 6’5” shooting guard out of Chicago Collins High School. After two solid if unspectacular seasons, Bond went into his senior year widely recognized as the top sixth man in NCAA basketball after averaging over 10 points per game off the bench his junior season. With Willie Burton, Melvin Newbern and Richard Coffey gone after leading the Gophers to within a basket of the Final Four, Bond was set to start his first collegiate game in 1990. Instead, he broke his foot twice and managed to play just 15 games off the bench his senior year.
The Career That Was
Unsurprisingly, considering his injury history and inexperience as a starter, Bond went undrafted by the NBA upon graduation. Instead, he started his career with the Saskatchewan Storm of the World Basketball League. With teams located in such disparate locales as Boca Raton, Florida and Kiev, Ukraine, WBL players over 6’5” were not allowed to play in the league until the following year when the maximum height was expanded to 6’7” in the WBL’s final season. Yes, this league existed, and Bond is joined by fellow WBL alums John Starks, Mario Ellie, Kieth Smart and Tim Legler.
But while he may not have been drafted by the NBA, Bond was also in the sixth round of the 1991 CBA draft by the Wichita Falls Texans, the previous year’s league champions. In that year’s CBA draft, Bond was taken after Robert Pack and Emanuel Davis, and ahead of Reggie Jordan and Lorenzo Williams, all of which had NBA careers. Bond left the Storm, signed with the Texans, and made the league’s All-Rookie team.
Bond’s performance in the CBA didn’t go unnoticed, and the following season he signed on as an undrafted rookie free agent with the Mavericks. After never having started a game in college, he found himself starting for Dallas on opening night of the 1992-1993 season, and the next night he racked up a career-high 25 points against the Timberwolves. That Dallas team, featuring fellow rookie Jimmy Jackson, finished a putrid 11-71. Still, Bond’s star was on the rise, as he averaged eight points and just over 21 minutes in 74 games that year–38 of them starts–a considerable accomplishment for an undrafted rookie who had never started a game in college.
After his one-year contract with the Mavs was up, Bond signed on with Utah where he backed up Jeff Hornacek, Jeff Malone and Jay Humphries. That offseason, Bond dedicated himself to his outside shot, and in his second NBA season, he more than doubled his three-point percentage. Still, he barely made the club the following season and was waived by the Jazz in December of ’94, just over a year after joining the club.
Nine days later, he signed on with the Pistons for the remainder of the season, but lasted only about two weeks. After a pair of ten-day contracts to return the the Jazz, Bond was released in January and signed on with Timberwolves but never saw game action. Bond found himself back in the CBA, finishing out the 1994-1995 season with his hometown Chicago Rockers. Inserted into the lineup midseason, he and Chuckie White paced an unusually stable CBA team into the playoffs.
Over the next three years, Bond continued to play in the CBA for the Connecticut Pride (96-97), La Crosse Bobcats (97), and Yakama Sun Kings (97-98). He signed with the Atlanta Hawks in ’97 but, as with the Timberwolves, never played for the team.
Bond finished up his pro career playing a few more seasons in Europe for S.S. Felico Scandone, a second-tier Italian team, then Bayer Giants Leverkusen, a traditional powerhouse in the German Bundesliga. He also played in Greece.
Walter Bond spent a couple of seasons with the Timberwolves broadcast team and has been a motivational speaker for over a decade, but what’s really weird is that he has his own show on the Food Network that debuts Thursday night at 9pm. I don’t even know what to say about that, but I’m definitely tuning in.
Ben Noble is a U of M graduate and Minneapolis-based writer, editor and photojournalist. You can follow the Twins with him here and follow him on Twitter at @TheBenNoble.