Five Questions with Bill Wennington

Bill Wennington loved hockey as a boy growing up in the suburbs of Montreal, but when you wear size-13 skates at age 11, you suspect you won't make it in the NHL.
So he turned to basketball, naturally enough. Wennington coupled his affection for hoops with his 7-foot, 240-pound frame to play 13 seasons in the NBA, a career that would see him win three world championships as a member of the Chicago Bulls playing alongside Michael Jordan.

Wennington was selected No. 16 by the Dallas Mavericks in the 1985 NBA Draft, one year after he represented Canada in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Champion Magazine, a Canadian publication I edited at the time, featured him on its Summer 1985 cover on the eve of the draft, sitting in his red Team Canada uniform on a New York Fire Department rescue truck outside Madison Square Garden, the site of the draft and where he played much of his college basketball while at St. John's University.&
More than three decades later, Big Bill and I met over lunch in Chicago -- he had a half-portion salad, which just seemed wrong -- to revisit a hockey career that didn't quite take off, though the sport still burns brightly in his heart today.
Here are Five Questions With… Bill Wennington:
You were born in Montreal, played high-school hoops in the Montreal suburb of Beaconsfield and then on Long Island, college basketball at St. John's University in New York, the NBA in Dallas, Sacramento and Chicago and pro ball in Bologna, Italy. Still, hockey beats strongly in your heart. Have you got a favorite NHL team and favorite all-time player?
My team today would have to be the Chicago Blackhawks because I live here, run into the guys and watch them, but still my heart is in Montreal. My favorite player of all time would be Ken Dryden. I know the Canadiens will hate me for this, but my second favorite is Bobby Orr. I was the biggest hockey fan when Ken left the team (in 1973-74) to pursue his career in law, came back the next season and was on top of his game again. I liked Ken because he was a big man and he was good. I was a defenseman, so I should have liked Larry Robinson more, but for some reason Kenny was always up there. I played hockey until I was 12, having started when I was 7 or 8. [Laughs] Always outdoors. I was a house-league guy, I wasn't good enough to play indoors. I wasn't a good enough skater to make a lot of teams. I was big and still growing. My mobility wasn't great. I was so big, with long arms and a long stick, so I never really had a choice but to play defense. If I could play in the NHL today, that's where I'd be. Growing up watching Bobby Orr, he was pretty good, right?

You try to get onto the ice a couple times a year now -- in custom-made skates. What's the story on those?
They had to put them together for me. I have a pair of CCMs that were made for me in the late 1980s, at Cosby Sports at Madison Square Garden, and back in 1996 or '97 I was doing basketball camps in Darien (Illinois) and one of the guys there made me a pair of Bauers. When I was 11 years old, I had a size-13 skate, 14 the next year. The boots I have now are size 15, but I wear 17 shoes, so they're tight. The blades aren't long enough, they don't go the full length of the boot but they work and I still skate. I've been on the ice at United Center a few times, and in 2015, before the start of the Stanley Cup Final, I was out there shooting the puck around. At one point it was just me and the Zamboni. That was pretty huge. I've played in NBA Finals, but to be skating on Stanley Cup Final ice the day before a game was played, that was phenomenal. I'd never been on ice like that, ever. It's like glass. I don't care what public rink you skate on, even right after the Zamboni, it's nowhere near the ice at the United Center.

You were age 13 in Beaconsfield when the Canadiens began their run of four straight championships from 1976-79, their most recent dynasty. What memories do you have of that?
When I was 15 in 1978, during that run, I got grounded for a week. I had to be in my room after dinner and wasn't allowed to watch TV. I had got into an argument with my stepmother, but the crime didn't fit the punishment. [Laughs] I missed the first game, but the second game, I snuck a little black-and-white TV into my room and watched the game with no sound. In the third period, one of my stepsisters came in and told on me. I begged her not to, telling her I'd pay her $10, and she just said, "Where are you going to get $10?" She told on me, and I had the grounding extended a little bit.

You're a fun tour guide on Big Bill's Walkabout, on your @34billy42 Twitter account, posting selfies during your NBA travels. How did that come to be?
I like to have fun, and I think I have a sense of humor. I'm not a Twitter guy, but I kind of got onto it for Chuck Swirsky, my broadcast partner who's on it. At the beginning it was to troll him a bit. People asked what I do on the road and I tell them I go for walks for exercise. I started tweeting a few selfies a couple years ago and named it Big Bill's Walkabout. It kind of happened by accident. My mother told me when I was young, "If you're going to take a picture, be in it. Otherwise, buy a postcard." She was right. I'll go some cities and see, say, churches, and take pictures of every one I pass, as a theme. I've always liked photography, and iPhones now make it so easy. Friends of my wife, who's not a social media person, were just telling her that they love my walkabouts.
You've just been named an NHL general manager for the next 90 seconds and you can draft three forwards, two defensemen and a goalie from any era, without a salary cap. Who are your starting six?
Let's start with Ken Dryden in goal and Bobby Orr on defense. Pretty sure we can throw Wayne Gretzky in there. Mario Lemieux? Sure. I'm going to put Chicago's Duncan Keith in there on defense. I love watching him here, I like him, and I think he and Bobby would work well together. And let's throw Guy Lafleur on there, that's a decent forward line. Think they might score a few goals?