Wilt Chamberlain was a sucker for statistics. He poured over them looking for some sort of edge to help him in games.
Wilt was always keeping score. With five games left in the 1961-62 NBA season, he knew that he needed 237 points to become the first player ever to score 4,000 in a single season and average more than 50 points per game.
But more than that, Wilt sought out statistics as a type of validation -- he used them to prove something. So as the first quarter of the Friday night game against the New York Knicks at the Hershey Sports Arena drew to a close, Chamberlain thought he had another record in his sights
It was the free-throw record that Wilt thought he had a shot at.
The game was shaping up as a perfect storm. After going 9 for 9 from the line in the opening quarter, along with 7 for 14 from the floor, Chamberlain began to think that he could do something extraordinary. The record for most foul shots made in a game was 24. Even for someone known as such a poor foul shooter as Wilt, it was still a record he wanted.
His teammates, however, had different ideas. After a half, Chamberlain had 41 points -- not an uncommon feat for Wilt -- on 14-for-26 shooting, including an inexplicable 13 for 14 from the line. With his teammates feeding him the ball in the third quarter, Wilt scored 28 more, going 10 for 16 from the floor and 8 for 8 on free throws. His 69 points after three quarters were nine away from his scoring record of 78 set on Dec. 8 in a triple-overtime loss to the Lakers at the Philadelphia Civic Center.
Wilt was thinking that hed set the record and get back to the club he owned in Harlem called Smalls Paradise. But with 75 points on the ledger, his teammates kept throwing him the ball, with the thought that he could take the scoring record into triple digits. But with eight minutes to go in the game, Chamberlain needed 25 more points to get to 100.
NBA
How was he going to score 25 points in the last eight minutes of a meaningless game?
Warriors teammate Al Attles said after the game, according to newspaper accounts, We wanted that Wilt got the record, because we all liked him.
Smalls Paradise
One hundred points in one game? Sure, Chamberlain had big games before, totaling 15 different games of at least 60 points in the 1961-62 season alone. Leading into the game against the Knicks in Hershey, Wilt had scored 61, 65 and 67 points earlier in the week. A 26-point effort in a loss to the Celtics is the deviant in a five-game stretch where Wilt scored 60-plus four times and averaged 56 per game.
But Chamberlain wasnt thinking about scoring 100 points against the Knicks when he made the drive from his place in Manhattan to Hershey. According to the book Wilt, 1962 by Gary M. Pomerantz, he was more bummed out that he had to spend a Friday night away from his club, a place that rivaled the Cotton Club in the 1920s and 1930s during the Harlem Renaissance.
At the club, Wilt held court with Etta James, writer James Baldwin and Redd Foxx. He welcomed guests like James Brown, Jackie Robinson and Miles Davis. Bill Russell, Chamberlains nemesis on the court, often stopped by and so did a host of Knicks players, like Willie Naulls.
Before Wilt owned the place, Smalls Paradise had a waiter named Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X.
More than anything, the club was where Wilt could be Wilt. He could enjoy his celebrity as he saw fit with other icons in Harlem. After scoring 65 points to beat the Hawks in St. Louis, Wilt headed straight for New York where he lived, even while playing for his hometown team in Philadelphia.
Down the stretch
If there was ever a game to score 100 points, the Warriors set up perfectly. There were just five games remaining in the season and the Warriors had clinched second place in the Eastern Division. At the same time, the Knicks were solidly in last place. Essentially, both teams were playing out the string.
The Warriors were in the midst of a season-ending, seven-game road trip and the trip to Hershey was their 13th neutral site game of the season. It was also the 11th time the Philadelphia Warriors faced the Knicks and they had one more date at Madison Square Garden just two days after the game in Hershey.
The Warriors and Knicks played five days prior to the game in Hershey. In that one, Wilt poured in 67 points in a 149-135 loss at the Civic Center. That mark was just six points shy of his season-high set on Jan. 13 in Philly against the Chicago Packers.
On March 2, the Warriors went up against a depleted Knicks club.
Guarding Wilt
Knicks starting center Phil Jordon remained back at the Knicks hotel in Harrisburg, a victim of a late night on the town and the flu, which meant first-year big man Darrall Imhoff was all coach Eddie Donovan had to guard Chamberlain. According to Pomerantz, Donovans instructions to Imhoff were simple:
Youre all I have tonight, Donovan told Imhoff. Try not to foul out.
That was easier said than done for the 6-foot-10 Imhoff, who picked up three fouls in the first quarter. He was gone from the game after getting his sixth foul in 20 minutes of action.
Wed shoot and Wilt would take off down the court like a lonesome end, Imhoff said years later in a documentary for the Naismith Hall of Fame. It was like covering a receiver. It was the hardest I ever saw Wilt work.
Imhoff tried everything to slow down Chamberlain. According to Pomerantz, the Knicks backup center tried pushing Wilt with forearms to his upper back. He also popped Wilt with his elbows between his shoulder blades or placed a foot between Chamberlains legs to trip him up or simply stood on the Giants foot.
None of it worked. Chamberlain just turned to the basket as if there was no one there and dropped in his first five shots.
Still, it wasnt just Imhoff put in charge of guarding Chamberlain. First-year forward Dave Budd, all 6-foot-6 of him, took a crack at Wilt, as did the 6-foot-6 Naulls and 6-foot-9 rookie Cleveland Buckner. Budd, Naulls and Buckner drew five fouls apiece guarding Wilt, as did Knicks teammates Richie Guerin and Johnny Green. Basically, every player in a New York uniform had to guard Chamberlain.
Defense, even without Jordon, was not what the Knicks were known for.
Darrall Imhoff gets the brunt of it for letting me score 100 points, but everyone was guarding me, Chamberlain told the Hall of Fame documentary project. They made a big deal about Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain, but Russell never guarded me alone, either.
Wheres the D?
Defense was not at the forefront of the NBA in the early 1960s. Against the last-place Knicks, big scoring games were fairly common. The Lakers Jerry West scored 63 against the Knicks a little more than a month before Wilts big night. Wests teammate, Elgin Baylor, set the single-game scoring record with 71 points against the Knicks during the 1960-61 season. Plus, Wilt put 67 on the Knicks just five days prior.
Moreover, with five games to go in the season, the teams were shot. To Pomerantz, Celtics Hall of Famer Bob Cousy complained about the amount of games the teams played, estimating that with exhibitions and the playoffs, the Celtics played 116 games in a season.
Thats not basketball, its vaudeville, Cousy told Pomerantz. I dont believe anyone -- owner, player or fan -- will argue that the caliber of play in the NBA in March is equal to that of November or December. At the finish theres not much more to the game than running up and down the court and shooting. Defenses are out of gas.
There were games, Cousy said, where teams only dressed seven players because of injuries and guys that were just worn out.
But with the season winding down and the Warriors set on feeding Chamberlain the ball in the fourth quarter to get him to 100 points, the Knicks did their best to try to stop it. The problem was they werent able to do it with conventional defense. So rather than triple or quadruple team Chamberlain, the Knicks began to foul other Warriors in order to keep the ball away from Wilt.
Not only that, but the Knicks also stalled on offense to milk the clock, despite trailing by a wide margin. To turn the tables, the Warriors started fouling the Knicks back with about four minutes to go in the game. From the 4:15 mark on, Chamberlain was the only player to make a field goal.
The fadeaway jumper
It wasnt just dunks and foul shots for Chamberlain, either. Known for his Dipper Dunk, Chamberlains best shot was a fadeaway in which he would get the ball in the low post, turn and release the ball 10 to 15 feet from the basket. Its a shot that is counter to what is customarily taught to big men; they learn early in their development to catch the ball, take a drop step and power up to the basket. Certainly Wilt could do that with ease, but he preferred the fallaway shots.
Teammate Paul Arizin said in interviews that he believed Chamberlain took fadeaway shots because he did not want to be known as a great player simply because he was bigger than everyone else. Chamberlain was an athlete, a champion track and field star at Overbrook High in West Philly and the University of Kansas before pro basketball came calling. Still, Wilt harbored dreams of becoming an Olympic decathlete and often talked about retiring from the NBA in order to practice the decathlon.
Arizin reasoned that Wilt wasnt interested in being the biggest or the strongest player, but instead the best player.
Certainly 100 points would resonate, but to get there Chamberlain had to rely on those fallaways. He took 21 shots in the final quarter, some from as far as 30 feet, which would be well beyond the three-point line in the modern game. In the fourth quarter, Chamberlain went 12 for 21 from the field and 7 for 10 from the line. He also topped 25 rebounds and helped teammate Guy Rodgers set a then career-high with 20 assists.
With 2:10 left in the game, Chamberlain hit a fadeaway for his 96th point of the game. He didnt score again for nearly a minute when he grabbed a lob from teammate York Larese and dunked for his 98th point.
The game was a farce in the last quarter, Chamberlain said in interviews after the game. After I broke the record, the Knicks decided they didn't want someone to score 100 points against them. They started to do anything they could to prevent it. They'd foul my teammates intentionally so the ball wouldn't come to me. You should have seen Guy Rodgers. They couldn't even foul him, he was so fast.
The century mark
Chamberlain missed three straight shots with a chance to get 100. The first miss came after he stole the inbounds pass following his basket to reach 98 points, when his 10-footer looked like it was going down before rolling out. Then, with less than a minute to go, Chamberlain missed twice from the low post, but rebounds from rookie forward Ted Luckenbill helped the Warriors maintain possession
With 46 seconds to go, the ball swung around to Chamberlains backup, Joe Ruklick, who threw an alley-oop to the big fella for his 100 points.
As a handful of estimated 4,124 spectators stormed the floor, Ruklick dashed to the scorers table.
'I ran to the scorers table, Ruklick told The New York Times. I wanted to make sure they got that assist down. I knew I was going to be part of a once-in-a-lifetime moment. And I have -- a walking footnote.
Contrary to legend, the game did not stop when Wilt got his 100. Though Kerry Ryman, a 14-year-old kid from the neighborhood near the arena, dashed off with the game ball, the Knicks and Warriors finished the game after order was restored. Chamberlain, however, simply stood in the center circle and did not touch the ball.
He didnt want to score again because 100 looked better than 102. He could have scored more though, having twice been whistled for offensive goaltending. He did, after all, set the record for free throws in a game with 28.
In the dreary, dungeon-like locker rooms that still remain beneath the stands at the Hershey Park Arena, Chamberlain drank a bottle of 7-Up and a carton of Abbotts milk. He also famously posed with a piece of paper in which Warriors publicist Harvey Pollack scrawled the number 100 so that a photographer attending the game as a spectator with his son could snap a picture for posterity.
Finally, when the fans had cleared out and the players were fed, showered and dressed, Chamberlain climbed into the back of his Cadillac with Knicks players Naulls and Johnny Green up front for the ride back to New York and Smalls Paradise.
Wilt by quarter
QuarterMinFGMFGAFTMFTA
Reb
AstPFPtsFirst12714910100023Second127125441118Third1210128661028Fourth121221105
50131
What followed
Two days later at Madison Square Garden, Chamberlain scored 58 points against the Knicks in a 129-128 victory. On March 7, he scored just 30 points in a 51-point loss to the Celtics at the Boston Garden before finishing the season with 44 points against the Syracuse Nationals and 34 against the Chicago Packers.
In the 12 playoff games that followed, Chamberlain averaged 48 minutes, 35 points and 26.6 rebounds per game before the Warriors bowed out in seven games to the Celtics in the Eastern finals. Chamberlain scored 22 in the two-point loss in Game 7 with only two 40-point games in the series.
When the season ended, the Warriors left Philadelphia for San Francisco. For a year, Philadelphia had no NBA team until the Syracuse Nationals moved and became the 76ers for the 1963-64 season.
Chamberlain returned to Philly to play for the Sixers midway through the 1964-65 season. He stayed until the end of the 1967-68 season when he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for, coincidentally enough, Darrall Imhoff.
Notes on sources:
Information from the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame archives, and the following books was used in this story:
-Pomerantz, Gary M. (2005). Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era.
-Cherry, Robert (2004). Wilt: Larger than Life.
-Pluto, Terry (2000). Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA.
-Taylor, John (2006). The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball
E-mail John Finger at jfinger@comcastsportsnet.com.
