Wilt Chamberlain

Wilt Chamberlain: The Man Who Broke the Statistics

On the night of 2 March 1962, in a half-empty arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the crowd began chanting "Give it to Wilt!" in the third quarter. He had 23 points after one, 41 at the half, and 69 with a quarter to play. He finished with 100, on 36 of 63 from the floor and — the truly implausible number — 28 of 32 from the free-throw line, from a man whose career average at the stripe was 51.1 percent. The Warriors beat the Knicks 169-147, fans poured onto the court, and the team's PR director Harvey Pollack scribbled "100" on a piece of paper for the photographers. No one has come within a quarter of it since.

Philadelphia, Overbrook, and a Fifty-Inch Vertical

Wilton Norman Chamberlain was born on 21 August 1936 in Philadelphia, the sixth of nine children of Olivia Ruth Johnson, a domestic worker, and William Chamberlain, a welder and handyman. He grew to 7 feet 1 inch and 258 pounds, but the number that mattered was the one nobody expected: a fifty-inch vertical leap on a frame that size. At Overbrook High School he was a track athlete as well as a basketball player, high-jumping 6 feet 6 inches and running 880 yards in 1:58.3. He scored 2,252 points, breaking Tom Gola's Philadelphia record, averaged 37.4 a game, and led Overbrook to a 56-3 record and two city championships.

Kansas, and a Triple Overtime

He went to the University of Kansas in 1955. His varsity debut produced 52 points and 31 rebounds against Northwestern, and over two seasons he averaged 29.9 points and 18.3 rebounds. The 1957 NCAA championship game against North Carolina went to triple overtime; Chamberlain scored 23 with 14 rebounds, Kansas lost, and he was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player anyway. He left after his junior year, worn down by opponents who held the ball rather than play him. Then he spent 1958-59 with the Harlem Globetrotters for $50,000 — more than the NBA was paying anyone.

An NBA That Was Not Ready

He debuted for the Philadelphia Warriors on 24 October 1959 with 43 points and 28 rebounds. His rookie season averages, 37.6 points and 27.0 rebounds, are records that still stand, and he won Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same year. On 24 November 1960 he pulled down 55 rebounds against Boston, a record that also still stands. In 1961-62 he averaged 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds, scored 4,029 points in a season, and played 48.53 minutes a game — missing eight minutes of the entire year, in a game that lasts forty-eight minutes.

The career line is close to absurd. He holds 72 NBA records. He is the only player to score 100 in a game, the only one to average 30 points and 20 rebounds in a season, which he did seven times, and he never fouled out in 1,045 regular-season games. In 1968 he became the first centre to lead the league in assists with 702, a stunt he compared to Babe Ruth leading the league in sacrifice bunts. On 18 March 1968 he was credited with 53 points, 32 rebounds, 14 assists, 24 blocks and 11 steals in a single game. He won four MVPs, made thirteen All-Star teams and ten All-NBA teams, seven of them first team.

Russell, and the Weight of Winning

For most of the 1960s the counter-argument to Chamberlain was Bill Russell, who kept winning championships while Chamberlain kept winning statistics. The reply came in 1966-67, when coach Alex Hannum demanded he subordinate his scoring; Chamberlain averaged a career-low 24.1 points on .683 shooting, concentrated on defence and passing, and the Philadelphia 76ers went 68-13, starting 46-4, and beat San Francisco in the Finals with Chamberlain contributing 17.7 points and 28.7 rebounds a game. Traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 1968 on a contract worth $250,000 after tax, he ruptured a patellar tendon in 1969-70 and played the rest of his career on a compromised knee. The 1971-72 Lakers won 33 consecutive games, still an NBA record, and the title. He retired after 1972-73.

The Rule Book Rewritten

His presence forced the league to change its own laws. The lane was widened from twelve feet to sixteen. Offensive goaltending was invented. Inbounding the ball over the backboard was banned. A rule was written requiring a shooter to keep his feet behind the free-throw line, because Chamberlain had taken to running up and dunking his free throws. He also introduced or popularized the finger roll and the fadeaway jumper. His former teammate Billy Cunningham put the statistical situation plainly: the NBA Guide reads like Wilt's personal diary. ESPN's Hal Bock called him scary, flat-out frightening, and said Chamberlain changed the game in fundamental ways no other player did.

After the Game

Chamberlain moved into professional volleyball, playing in the International Volleyball Association, serving as its president and entering its Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978 and named to the NBA's 35th, 50th and 75th anniversary teams. He died on 12 October 1999, aged 63.

Why Wilt Is Called a Genius

The claim rests on physical gift and craft rather than intellect; saying otherwise is flattery. The gift was a biological outlier: 7 feet 1 inch with a fifty-inch vertical, sub-two-minute half-mile speed and championship high-jump ability in one body. The craft gets underrated. He invented or refined moves — the finger roll, the fadeaway — that let a giant score without being pushed off the block, and his durability was a discipline: 48.53 minutes a game for a whole season and not one foul-out in 1,045 games means a man who controlled his body precisely enough never to be legislated off the floor. The best evidence of basketball intelligence proper is 1966-67. Told to stop scoring, he rebuilt his game around defence and passing, shot .683, won a title with a 68-13 team, then led the league in assists the following year. That is a player who understood the sport well enough to play it backwards.

The counter-case is that dominance of this kind is partly an artifact of era. He was a physical anomaly in a league that had not caught up, and the rules changed because the competition could not adjust. He lost far more often to Russell's Boston than he beat them, two championships to Russell's eleven, the fact his critics lead with. What can be defended without inflation is narrower: he is the most statistically dominant athlete in American team sport, and the only one whose existence forced his league to rewrite its laws.

Legacy

The 100-point game has passed into a category beyond record-keeping; it functions now as a boundary marker for what is thinkable. More than sixty years on, the arithmetic of a 50.4-point average or a 55-rebound night reads less like sport than like a misprint. Chamberlain spent his career being told his numbers were empty and his rings too few, and he answered by winning two titles in the two seasons he consented to play someone else's way. The rules of professional basketball still carry his fingerprints, and every player who has since been called unguardable is measured against a man who genuinely was.