Today, the tallest of the Deadheads, the man whose wingspan could be seen towering over most others during the Fare Thee Well webcast, turns 63 years quite young today. To celebrate, it only seems appropriate to revisit the NBA Hall of Famer’s finest work during the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary celebration.

To start, there’s this wonderful piece of writing Walton put together as a part of the official program at the Chicago, a gathering he called an “intergalactic celebration of peace, freedom, love, independence and the first 50 years of the Grateful Dead.” You really can’t afford not to read it. Walton also documented his time at both Santa Clara and Chicago through Twitter, posing with damn near everybody including the man of the hour–Trey Anastasio. Walton also brought along his son, Luke, now the interim head coach of the Golden State Warriors, to hang with Bruce Hornsby, whose son plays basketball for LSU (Sidenote: Hornsby’s son is a god damn assassin with the game on the line).

Walton’s Fare Thee Well travels were so well documented he even had Southwest Airlines tweeting Grateful Dead references. The man drove the country Grateful Dead-crazy for two weeks in June and July! Bill Walton is responsible for your Grateful Dead fever, America.

Fare Thee Well wasn’t the beginning of Walton’s public Deadhead tour, he’s been doing it for years on ESPN. How could you forget his poetic rambling about Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead during a live college basketball game? Or that time he put Jay Bilas in a Dead t-shirt on air? He also assigned Grateful Dead tunes to each one of his ESPN colleagues. There is nothing the man cannot do when it comes to the band.

Happy Birthday, Bill Walton. Until then, keep throwing it down, big man.