Bill Walton honored at Dead & Company Sphere performance

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Dead & Company, current resident at Sphere and Grateful Dead spin-off band, paid tribute to one of the original band’s most high-profile fans Thursday.

Bill Walton, a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, basketball icon, and legendary broadcaster, received a tribute from the band at their May 30 show at the iconic Sphere in Las Vegas. Dead & Company honored Walton by displaying his jersey number #32 on their guitars during the show Thursday night.

Walton, who died on Monday after a battle with cancer, referred to himself in his 2016 autobiography as a “proud Dead Head,” the band’s loving nickname for its fans. He had been present for more than 869 Grateful Dead concerts. The band’s drummer, Mickey Hart, called Walton his best friend.

“He was an amazing person, singular, irreplaceable, giving, loving,” Hart told the Associated Press. “He called himself the luckiest man in the world but it was us who were lucky — to know him.” His fandom was widely known, with Walton often sporting tie-dyed clothing during basketball game broadcasts and spotted at Grateful Dead shows

Dead & Company features former Grateful Dead band members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann, alongside guitarist and pop star John Mayer. In January, they were announced as the newest resident at Sphere via social media post. They followed U2, who opened the Las Vegas landmark in Sept. and took their final bow on the Sphere stage in March. The band began their residency on May 16 and has shows scheduled at Sphere through Aug. 10.

Construction crews broke ground on Sphere on Sept. 27, 2018. The venue reportedly cost $2.3 billion to create. On the outside of Sphere are approximately 1.2 million LED pucks, which are spaced eight inches apart. Each of those pucks, Sphere Entertainment officials say, is capable of displaying 256 million colors. Together, they make up the “Exosphere.” Representing the largest screen in the world, the Exosphere quickly became an eye-catching focal point on the entertainment capital of the world’s skyline.

On the inside, Sphere is a performance venue that seats up to 20,000 people and features a 160,000-square-foot LED display that wraps around the audience. The 16K by 16K display is the highest-resolution screen on the planet. In addition, Sphere boasts a state of the art sound system and 4D technologies meant to immerse visitors into the content they are watching.

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