LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bill Walton was never afraid to be himself.

Larger than life, only in part because of his nearly 7-foot frame, Walton was a two-time NCAA champion at UCLA, a two-time champion in the NBA, a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, an on-court icon in every sense of the word. And off the court, Walton was a chronic fun-seeker, a broadcaster who adhered to no conventional norms and took great joy in that, a man with a deeply serious side about the causes that mattered most to him.

“Bill Walton,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said, “was truly one of a kind.”

Walton died Monday at the age of 71 after a prolonged fight with cancer, the league announced on behalf of his family. He was the NBA’s MVP in the 1977-78 season, the league’s sixth man of the year in 1985-86 and a member of the league’s 50th anniversary and 75th anniversary teams. That followed a college career in which he blossomed while playing under coach John Wooden at UCLA, becoming a three-time national player of the year.

“I am sad today hearing that my comrade and one of the sports world’s most beloved champions and characters has passed,” Julius “Dr. J” Erving, a fellow Hall of Famer, wrote on social media. “Bill Walton enjoyed life in every way. To compete against him and to work with him was a blessing in my life.”

Tributes immediately began pouring in, and the NBA held a moment of silence to commemorate Walton’s life before Game 4 of the Boston Celtics-Indiana Pacers matchup in the Eastern Conference finals on Monday night.

Walton, who entered the Hall of Fame in 1993, was one of the game’s most celebrated figures. His NBA career — disrupted by chronic foot injuries — lasted only 468 games combined with the Portland Trail Blazers, the San Diego/Los Angeles Clippers and the Celtics. He averaged 13.3 points and 10.5 rebounds in those games, neither of those numbers exactly record-setting.

Still, his impact on the game was massive.

“I love him as a friend and as a teammate,” Celtics legend Larry Bird said. “It was a thrill for me to play with my childhood idol and together we earned an NBA championship in 1986. He is one of the greatest ever to play the game. I am sure that all of my teammates are as grateful as I am that we were able to know Bill. He was such a joy to know and he will be sorely missed.”

Walton’s most famous game was the 1973 NCAA title game, UCLA against Memphis, in which he shot 21 for 22 from the field and led the Bruins to another national championship.

“One of my guards said, ’Let’s try something else,’” Wooden told The Associated Press in 2008 for a 35th anniversary retrospective on that game.

Wooden’s response during that timeout: “Why? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

They kept giving the ball to Walton, and he kept delivering in a performance for the ages.

“It’s very hard to put into words what he has meant to UCLA’s program, as well as his tremendous impact on college basketball,” UCLA coach Mick Cronin said Monday. “Beyond his remarkable accomplishments as a player, it’s his relentless energy, enthusiasm for the game and unwavering candor that have been the hallmarks of his larger-than-life personality.

“It’s hard to imagine a season in Pauley Pavilion without him.”

When Walton retired from the NBA he turned to broadcasting, something he never thought he could be good at — and an avenue he sometimes wondered would be possible for him, because he had a pronounced stutter at times in his life.

Turns out, he was excellent at broadcasting: Walton was an Emmy winner, eventually was named one of the top 50 sports broadcasters of all time by the American Sportscasters Association and even appeared on The New York Times’ bestseller list for his memoir, “Back from the Dead.” It told the story of a debilitating back injury suffered in 2008, one that left him considering taking his own life because of the constant pain, and how he spent years recovering.

“I lived most of my life by myself. But as soon as I got on the court I was fine,” Walton told The Oregonian newspaper for a story published in 2017. “But in life, being so self conscious, red hair, big nose, freckles and goofy, nerdy looking face and can’t talk at all. I was incredibly shy and never said a word. Then, when I was 28 I learned how to speak. It’s become my greatest accomplishment of my life and everybody else’s biggest nightmare.”

The last part of that was just Walton hyperbole. He was known for his on-air tangents and sometimes appeared on-air in Grateful Dead T-shirts; Walton was a huge fan of the band and referenced it often, even sometimes recording satellite radio specials celebrating what it meant to be a “Deadhead.”

And the Pac-12 Conference, which has basically evaporated in many ways now because of college realignment, was another of his many loves. He always referred to it as the “Conference of Champions” and sang its praises all the way to the end.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” he once said on a broadcast, tie-dyed T-shirt on, a Hawaiian lei around his neck.

Walton was involved in the broadcasts of college and NBA games for CBS, NBC and ABC/ESPN in his career, along with stints working for the Clippers and Sacramento Kings as an analyst. He returned to ESPN and the Pac-12 Network, further touting the roots of his league, in 2012.

“Bill Walton was a legendary player and a singular personality who genuinely cherished every experience throughout the journey of his extraordinary life,” ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said. “Bill often described himself as ‘the luckiest guy in the world,’ but anyone who had the opportunity to interact with Bill was the lucky one. He was a truly special, giving person who always made time for others. Bill’s one-of-a-kind spirit captivated and inspired audiences during his second career as a successful broadcaster.”

But Walton will always be synonymous with UCLA’s dominance.

He enrolled at the school in 1970, before freshmen could play on the varsity team. Once he could play for Wooden, the Bruins were unbeatable for more than two years — Walton’s UCLA teams won their first 73 games, the bulk of the Bruins’ extraordinary 88-game winning streak. It was snapped against Notre Dame in 1974, a 71-70 loss in which Walton shot 12 for 14 from the field.

“Bill Walton’s passing is a sad tragedy. One of the great ones in UCLA basketball history,” Digger Phelps, who coached that Notre Dame team, posted Monday on social media. “We were great friends over the years. It won’t be the same without him.”

UCLA went 30-0 in each of Walton’s first two seasons, and 86-4 in his career on the varsity team.

“My teammates … made me a much better basketball player than I could ever have become myself,” Walton said at his Hall of Fame speech in 1993. “The concept of team has always been the most intriguing aspect of basketball to me. If I had been interested in individual success or an individual sport, I would have taken up tennis or golf.”

Walton led Portland to the 1977 NBA title, then got his second championship with Boston in 1986.

“Bill Walton was an icon,” said Jody Allen, the chair of the Trail Blazers. “His leadership and tenacity on the court were key to bringing a championship to our fans and defined one of the most magical moments in franchise history. We will always treasure what he brought to our community and the sport of basketball.”

The Celtics released a statement saying: “Bill Walton was one of the most consequential players of his era. … Walton could do it all, possessing great timing, complete vision of the floor, excellent fundamentals and was of one of the greatest passing big men in league history.”

Walton considered himself fortunate to have been guided by two of the game’s greatest minds in Wooden and Celtics patriarch Red Auerbach.

“Thank you John, and thank you Red, for making my life what it has become,” Walton said in his Hall of Fame speech.

Walton was the No. 1 pick by Portland in the 1974 draft. He said Bill Russell was his favorite player and referred to Bird as the toughest and best he played with, so it was appropriate that his playing career ended as a member of the Celtics. “Playing basketball with Larry Bird,” Walton once said, “is like singing with Jerry Garcia,” referencing the co-founder of the Grateful Dead.

In his final years, Walton spoke out about issues that mattered most to him, such as the problem of homelessness in his native San Diego, urging city leaders to take action and create shelter space to help those in need.

“What I will remember most about him was his zest for life,” Silver said in a statement. “He was a regular presence at league events — always upbeat, smiling ear to ear and looking to share his wisdom and warmth. I treasured our close friendship, envied his boundless energy and admired the time he took with every person he encountered.”

Walton died surrounded by his loved ones, his family said. He is survived by wife Lori and sons Adam, Nate, Chris and Luke — a NBA championship-winning player and now a coach.

Said Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, who was teammates with Walton in Boston: “He defiantly competed for every moment in life to be the greatest it could possibly be.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department sued Ticketmaster and its parent company Thursday, accusing them of running an illegal monopoly over live events in America and asking a court to break up the system that squelches competition and drives up prices for fans.

Filed in federal court in Manhattan, the sweeping antitrust lawsuit was brought with 30 state and district attorneys general and seeks to dismantle the monopoly they say is squeezing out smaller promoters, hurting artists and drowning ticket buyers in fees. Ticketmaster and its owner, Live Nation Entertainment, have a long history of clashes with major artists and their fans, including Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen.

“It’s time for fans and artists to stop paying the price for Live Nation’s monopoly,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said. “It is time to restore competition and innovation in the entertainment industry. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”

The government accused Live Nation of tactics — including threats and retaliation — that Garland said have allowed the entertainment giant to “suffocate the competition” by controlling virtually every aspect of the industry, from concert promotion to ticketing. The impact is seen in an “endless list of fees on fans,” the attorney general said.

“Live music should not be available only to those who can afford to pay the Ticketmaster tax,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Ricky Palitti and Jacob DeLong of Detroit said they recently spent about $1,200 for three tickets to a Shania Twain concert using Ticketmaster and about $370 to see RuPaul’s Drag Race Live.

“I think tickets have definitely gone up in price, but I also think that all the different fees that Ticketmaster places on an order definitely hikes the price up, for sure,” Palitti said.

DeLong said that while he respects an artist’s work, the added fees make the costs to see a show “ridiculous.”

“Where can we get a break?” he said.

Live Nation, which has for years denied that it is violating antitrust laws, said the lawsuit “won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees and access to in-demand shows.”

“Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment,” Live Nation added. It said most service fees go to venues and that outside competition has ”steadily eroded” Ticketmaster’s market share. The company said it would defend itself against the “baseless allegations.”

The Justice Department said Live Nation’s anti-competitive practices include using long-term contracts to keep venues from choosing rivals, blocking venues from using multiple ticket sellers and threatening venues that they could lose money if they don’t choose Ticketmaster.

In 2021, the concert giant threatened to financially retaliate against a firm if one of its portfolio companies didn’t stop competing with Live Nation for artist promotion contracts, the Justice Department alleged. Live Nation has also scooped up smaller promoters it viewed as a threats, officials said.

Michael Carrier, a professor at Rutgers Law School who specializes in antitrust litigation, said the Justice Department has a strong case. He expects Live Nation to “try to cast blame elsewhere,” such as arguing that prices are set by artists or venues, but he said those explanations are weak.

“The DOJ showed how Live Nation really has its tentacles in each element of the supply chain, which means that it has a lot more control than it is letting on,” he said. “And, in terms of justifications, there is really very little that (Live Nation) can offer in terms of how they’re helping the consumer.”

The complaint said a breakup between Live Nation and Ticketmaster is on the table. That, combined with other remedies such as preventing some exclusive deals that shackle competition, could potentially help fans see lower ticket prices, give artists more agency in choosing venues and boost smaller promoters’ success in the long run, Carrier said.

Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation in 2010, is the world’s largest ticket seller across live music, sports, theater and more. During its annual report last month, the company said Ticketmaster distributed more than 620 million tickets through its systems in 2023.

Around 70% of tickets for major concert venues in the U.S. are sold through Ticketmaster, according to data in a federal lawsuit filed by consumers in 2022. The company owns or controls more than 265 of North America’s concert venues and dozens of top amphitheaters, according to the Justice Department.

Live Nation’s footprint has grown substantially over the past 10 years, according to the company’s annual financial reports. Between the end of 2014 and the end of 2023, Live Nation reported a worldwide increase of more than 136% in terms of venues the company “owned, leased, operated, had exclusive booking rights for or had an equity interest over which we had a significant influence.”

The ticket seller sparked outrage in November 2022 when its site crashed during a presale event for a Taylor Swift stadium tour. The company said the site was overwhelmed by both fans and attacks from bots, which were posing as consumers to scoop up tickets and sell them on secondary sites. The debacle prompted congressional hearings and bills in state legislatures aimed at better protecting consumers.

The Justice Department allowed Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge as long as Live Nation agreed not to retaliate against concert venues for using other ticket companies for 10 years. In 2019, the department investigated and found that Live Nation had repeatedly violated that agreement. The government then extended the prohibition on retaliating against concert venues to 2025.

“It’s a failure of past antitrust. And it’s something that rips customers off every day,” said John Kwoka, a professor of economics at Northeastern University who was also a consultant for the states that ran a 2009 investigation in parallel with the Justice Department into Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s original merger.

Kwoka, who is among those who have long advocated for a breakup, notes that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have remained “largely unchecked” over the last 15 years.

Ticketmaster’s clashes with artists and fans date back three decades. Pearl Jam took aim at the company in 1994, years before the Live Nation merger, although the Justice Department ultimately declined to bring a case. More recently, Bruce Springsteen fans were enraged over high ticket costs because of the platform’s dynamic pricing system.

Live Nation has maintained that artists and teams set prices and decide how tickets are sold. The company’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs, Dan Wall, said in a statement Thursday that factors such as increasing production costs, artist popularity and online ticket scalping are “actually responsible for higher ticket prices.”

The Justice Department lawsuit filed Thursday is the latest example of the Biden administration’s aggressive antitrust enforcement. The effort has targeted companies accused of engaging in illegal monopolies that box out competitors and drive up prices. In March, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Apple alleging that the tech giant has monopoly power in the smartphone market. The Democratic administration has also taken on Google, Amazon and other tech giants.

DENVER (AP) — You didn’t think summer travel would be easy, did you?

Highways and airports are likely to be jammed the next few days as Americans head out for Memorial Day weekend getaways and then return home.

AAA predicts this will be the busiest start-of-summer weekend in nearly 20 years, with 43.8 million people expected to travel at least 50 miles from home between Thursday and Monday. The Transportation Security Administration says up to 3 million might pass through airport checkpoints on Friday alone.

And that is just a sample of what is to come. U.S. airlines expect to carry a record number of passengers this summer. Their trade group estimates that 271 million travelers will fly between June 1 and August 31, breaking the record of 255 million set – you guessed it – last summer.

The annual expression of wanderlust is happening at a time when Americans tell pollsters they are worried about the economy and the direction of the country.

A slowdown, and in some cases a retreat, from the big price increases of the last two years may be helping.

Airfares are down 6% and hotel rates have dipped 0.4%, compared with a year ago, according to government figures released last week. Prices for renting a car or truck are down 10%. The nationwide price of gas is around $3.60 a gallon, about 6 cents higher than a year ago, according to AAA.

Johannes Thomas, CEO of the hotel and travel search company Trivago, said he thinks more customers are feeling the pinch of prices that have plateaued but at much higher levels than before the pandemic. He said they are booking farther in advance, staying closer to home, taking shorter trips, and compromising on accommodations — staying in three-star hotels instead of five-star ones.

Many travelers have their own cost-saving strategies, including combining work and pleasure on the same trip.

“I have largely been able to adapt by traveling at strange hours. I’ll fly out late at night, come in early in the morning, stay longer than I intended, and work remotely,” said Lauren Hartle of Boston, an investor for a clean-energy venture firm.

Hartle, who flew from Boston to Dallas on Wednesday for a work conference, plans to attend a summer family gathering in North Carolina but is otherwise considering trips closer to home — and maybe by train instead of plane.

Catey Schast, a nanny and piano teacher in Maine, said her Boston-Dallas flight cost $386 round trip. “It wasn’t terrible,” but it was higher than the $200 to $300 she paid in the past to visit family in Texas, she said.

Schast plans a beach vacation in Florida in July. High prices could discourage her from taking other trips, but “if I really want to go somewhere, I’m more of a how-can-I-make-this-happen type of person, as long as I have the time off work.”

As in past years, most holiday travelers are expected to travel by car – more than 38 million of them, according to AAA. The organization advises motorists hoping to avoid the worst traffic to leave metropolitan areas early Thursday and Friday and to stay off the roads between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday and Monday.

“We haven’t seen any pullback in travel since the pandemic. Year after year, we have seen these numbers continue to grow,” AAA spokesperson Aixa Diaz said. “We don’t know when it’s going to stop. There’s no sign of it yet.”

There’s certainly no slowdown at airports. The number of people going through security checkpoints is up 3.2% this year. The TSA said it screened 2.85 million people last Friday and nearly as many on Sunday — the two busiest days of the year so far.

TSA predicts it will screen more than 18 million travelers and airline crew members during the seven-day stretch that begins Thursday, up 6.4% from last year. Friday is expected to be the busiest day for air travel, with nearly 3 million people passing through checkpoints. The TSA record is 2.91 million, set on the Sunday after Thanksgiving last year.

“We’re going to break those records this summer,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said.

The agency, which was created after the 9/11 terror attacks, has struggled at times with peak loads. Pekoske told The Associated Press that pay raises for front-line screeners have helped improve staffing by reducing attrition from more than 20% to less than 10%.

Airlines say they also have staffed up since being caught short when travel began to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring and summer of 2022.

With any luck from the weather, travelers could see fewer canceled flights than in recent summers. So far this year, U.S. airlines have canceled 1.2% of their flights, according to FlightAware data, compared with 1.4% at this point last year and 2.8% in 2022 — a performance so poor it triggered complaints and increased scrutiny from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Even before the holiday weekend started, however, storms caused widespread cancellations at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the biggest hub for American Airlines. The carrier dropped more than 200 flights, or 5% of its schedule, by late afternoon.

Stranded travelers were not happy.

“Our flight got canceled right before the check-in. And now there’s no flights here until Friday because (open seats on other flights) went really quickly. We might wind up driving. Isn’t that terrible?” said Rosie Gutierrez of Allen, Texas, who was trying to get to Florida along with her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

American’s chief operating officer, David Seymour, said the airline has beefed up its staffing and technology in preparation for the seasonal rush.

“It’s a long summer, but we’re ready for it. We have the right resources,” he said.

American is offering its most ambitious summer schedule ever — 690,000 flights between May 17 and Sept. 3.

United Airlines forecasts its biggest Memorial Day weekend, with nearly 10% more passengers than last year. Delta Air Lines expects to carry 5% more passengers this weekend, kicking off its heaviest summer schedule ever of international flights.

According to AAA, the top domestic and international destinations are familiar ones. They include Orlando, Las Vegas, London, Paris and Rome.

So what about nervousness over the economy?

It’s important to note that people often say their own finances are better than average. In an AP survey from February, 54% said their personal situation was good — but only 30% felt the same about the nation’s economy.

That could explain why they can afford to splurge on travel.