PITTSBURGH — Every now and again, somewhere in the distant foothills of that purple mountain majesty of basketball stats formed by The Big Dipper, a flash of lightning sparks a small fire that refocuses our fractious attention on the athletic miracle that was Wilton Norman Chamberlain.
DeMar DeRozan of the Chicago Bulls caused one recently, scoring 35 points or more in an NBA record seven consecutive games in which he shot at least 50%. It broke Chamberlain's record of six such games he did twice, the last time in 1963.
But as noted, such accomplishments occur in the foothills of the Chamberlain Mountains, nowhere near the highlands, where Wilt once averaged 50.4 points in a season, or 48.5 minutes per game (overtime, ya know). Both of those figures he sculpted into agelessness in 1962, the same year he went to the apex.
Thus on Wednesday of this week comes the 60th anniversary of Wilt's 100-point game for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks, played in a Hershey Park Arena where no one was terribly aware of what was happening until the public address announcer noted with some seven minutes left that Chamberlain had broken his own record of 78.
"What happens at that point is the Warriors' curiosity intensifies — can he do it?" said author Gary Pomerantz, who teaches graduate level journalism at Stanford. "And the Knicks' sense of dread intensifies — if this guy scores 100 against us, people are still gonna be talking about it in 60 years."
So let's talk.
No one's climbed within 18 miles of 100 in those six decades. The late Kobe Bryant scored 81 one night in 2006, a venom strike of Mamba virtuosity that included seven 3-point baskets. The 3-point shot did not exist in 1962.
But this talk should probably avoid the focus on numbers. There was simply too much at work that night in Hershey, starting with what on earth were the NBA's Philly and New York teams doing in Hershey?
"The NBA then was a bit of a carnival, bit of a lounge act, in search of itself," Pomerantz said. "The college game outdrew the NBA in those years. When the Celtics were winning championships year after year in the early '60s, they were drawing five or six, seven thousand a game. The reason this 100-point game was played in Hershey was because the NBA would take games out of teams' home cities where there was a big enough arena to try to grow the sport, to create new fans. The Lakers played games in San Francisco and Seattle, the Cincinnati Royals played games in Dayton, the Celtics played in Providence. Hershey is where the Warriors went three times that season."
It was an odd setting — a quiet night in Amish country in front of about 4,000 chocolate factory workers — to host the thunderbolt that announced the rise of the Black superstar in the NBA. But if the building was half empty, the moment overflowed with symbolism.
"It was a revolutionary act," said Pomerantz, whose 2005 book on that night brought it to full historical clarity. "It symbolically exploded the NBA owners' quota. They were so naive, and prejudiced, that they believed if you had too many Black players on a team — whatever that meant — that white fans wouldn't come to the game."
This was a league that needed fixing and Chamberlain was the perfect person, better still the perfect showman, to jump start that process.
"To score 100 points, you not only have to have the talent, you need an ego," Pomerantz said, "and Wilt was 7-1 and his ego was bigger. He had this Goliath syndrome where he had to be bigger than he was, and he was already pretty big. He not only bent this team to his will, but an entire sport."
Jack McMahon, the late NBA player, coach, and scout who likely still holds league records for quotability, once said, "The best thing to happen to the NBA was that Wilt Chamberlain was a nice man. Otherwise, he'd have killed us all with his left hand."
Pomerantz recounted the first meeting of Chamberlain and celebrated rookie Walt Bellamy in his book, "Wilt, 1962, the Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era."
At the center jump, Bellamy extended his hand to Wilt and said, "Hello Mr. Chamberlain, I'm Walter Bellamy."
"Hello Mr. Bellamy. You won't get a shot off in the first half."
The Big Dipper blocked the first nine shots Bellamy took within 15 feet and scored over him in every conceivable way.
At the second half tip on a night Chamberlain would outscore the rookie 51-14, Wilt told Bellamy. "OK Walter, now you can play."
Not four months later, Wilt found himself in Hershey against a downtrodden and now forever doomed Knicks club that eagerly awaited the end of a terrible season.
A 50% foul shooter, he shot 32 times from the line and made an astounding 28 — underhanded. He nailed 36 of 63 field goal attempts, the last on a Dipper Dunk for points 99 and 100.
Chamberlain did not exactly embrace his masterpiece, feeling it would brand him as some stubborn individualist, and perhaps because the initial reaction to it was that it was merely another show on the carnival circuit.
It's a little sad that Wilt is too often remembered for the wrong things, for his unfortunate habit of losing to the indomitable Boston icon Bill Russell, whose Celtic teammates were too superior to Wilt's capable Philadelphians of that era, for his preposterous claim of 20,000 sexual encounters, even for his stated desire to fight Muhammad Ali.
"Don't you think you'd be better off," asked his father, "practicing your foul shooting?"
More than two decades on from his death, Wilt should be better remembered for the simple statement that there was no one and nothing like him. That's what happens when a man becomes a mountain.
