May 4, 2010
With the NBA playoffs in full swing now, and with my Lebron James-led Cavaliers losing by a cool 18 points to the Celtics last night, I think we should take a few moments to go properly googly-eyed at the single greatest basketball player who ever lived. Those of you who think classic black & white movies are inherently less significant because they’re were made before you were born, however, may find it hard to swallow that we won’t be discussing Michael Jordan, who regularly put a turbocharged ass-whuppin’ on his peers, but not to the phantasmagorical degree we’re talking about here.
No, we’re heading to the early 1960s, a miraculous time when professional basketball players could take only two steps while holding the ball and driving to the basket, simply because that’s what it says in the rulebook! And if they nailed one from half-court, let alone from a few steps above the key, it counted for exactly two points, just like any other shot.
Back in those days, nobody thought to trademark a silhouette of themselves dunking the ball behind their head so it could be plastered on overpriced merchandise. But one athlete dominated the sport to a degree that was very nearly equal to Babe Ruth’s unchallenged sovereignty over major league baseball in the 1920s. I’m talking about, of course, 7-foot 1-inch Wilton Norman “Wilt” Chamberlain— aka “Wilt the Stilt” and-or “The Big Dipper.”
That’s Wilt in 1959, the year he played for, of all teams, the Harlem Globetrotters. At the time, the NBA wouldn’t accept a player straight out of college if he didn’t finish his last year of classes. So Chamberlain, who was sick of being triple-teamed and watching his opponents freeze the ball for minutes at a time in order to avoid confronting him during an actual play for the basket, left the University of Kansas to bide time with the Trotters. This allowed NBA players to breath easily for another season. But they knew he’d be coming sooner or later, and, when he did, the game was literally changed forever.
Drafted by his hometown Philadelphia Warriors, Chamberlain scored 43 points and pulled down 28 rebounds in his first-ever professional contest...although it wasn’t all that much of a contest. He would go on to average 37.6 points and 27 rebounds during the 1960 season, numbers that were (and remain) so utterly sick, new rules were eventually instituted to try to keep the Stilt at least a little bit in check. First, the lane was widened so he couldn’t hang out waiting for an easy dunk, and the concept of offensive goal tending was also introduced. My personal favorite, however, is that the league finally decreed Chamberlain could no longer leap from the line during foul shots and deposit the ball mere inches away from the basket!
I’ve never heard of another professional sports league that substantially altered the rules because one player was so overwhelmingly talented the others couldn’t compete. This wasn’t simply a matter of Chamberlain being bigger than everyone else, either, although even when little-boy-Paul was rooting for him in the early 1970s, he was still a more impressive physical specimen than virtually anyone else on the court. Chamberlain was graceful— he could move; there was nothing lumbering about the way he carried himself.
One of Chamberlain's least-heralded but still astonishing exploits is that he never fouled out of a game. Never! He wasn’t falling on top of people or hacking through them like they were so much shrubbery. He was a basketball player, an absolutely superb basketball player who happened to be as big as a fucking tree.
It’s a professional sports truism that statistics don’t tell the whole story, but there’s no denying they can tell a considerable chunk of it. Chamberlain’s stats read like a tall tale told by somebody’s grandpa— Paul Bunyon in satin shorts. They’re so impressive they appear to be misprints when you compare them to those of the stars who followed in his wake. Forget, by the way, anyone who preceded him, even the Minneapolis Lakers’ formidable George Mikan, who was the league’s first genuine superstar. At that point, you might as well be juxtaposing a cruise missile and a pop gun.
Check these numbers out, all of which are records, and by a considerable distance:
* Chamberlain averaged 22.9 rebounds per game for his career, and 27.2 for a season. Shaquille O’Neal has averaged 11. The highest Shaq has ever managed in one season is 13.9. Chamberlain once pulled down 55 boards in a single game (and he landed 46 another time.) He also hauled in 1,000 or more rebounds in a season 13 times!
* Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points per game during his 1961-62 season with Philadelphia, which is just ridiculous. Jordan’s best was 37.1. Nowadays, 50 point games are rare enough that they can sometimes make the front page of the newspaper, let alone the sports section.
* And, of course, there’s Wilt’s signature achievement, a feat so staggering it truly doesn’t sound possible. On May 2, 1962, during a game in Hershey, PA, Chamberlain scored 100 points against the New York Knicks. By himself. This sounds like something you’d pretend to do against your friends in the back yard, rather than actually pulling it off in the NBA.
The home crowd had seen Chamberlain score more than 60 on multiple occasions, so no one, including Chamberlain, was expecting 100 when he hit the locker room at halftime with 41 under his belt. But even the Knicks’ arm-hacking, quadruple team defense couldn’t stop him in the second half, and he hit the century mark on an alley-oop dunk with under a minute to go. He also nailed 28 of his 32 free throws, which would normally suffice as a good game all by itself.
To put this in further jaw-dropping perspective, Kobe Bryant scored 81 in a game back in 2006, and, even with the benefit of three-point range, he was treated like Christ on ESPN. But he was still 20 points away from passing Chamberlain. So, to paraphrase Edward G. Robinson, “Who’s your Messiah now?!”
***
By the time I became aware of Chamberlain’s existence and realized he was several steps removed from the rest of humanity when it came to all things basketball - I had the above poster, a life insurance company promotional giveaway, hanging on my bedroom wall when I was 8 years-old - he was playing for L.A. and had actually “filled out" to over 300 pounds of solid muscle.
But Chamberlain was forever haunted by the fact that his arch rival, Bill Russell, guided the Boston Celtics to an incredible 11 NBA championships while Wilt had managed only one with Phillie. If you want a musical equivalent, Russell was John Lennon to Chamberlain’s Bob Dylan. Both of them were massively gifted geniuses who spurred each other on to better work.
Russell, however, benefited from being a member of one of the most talent-filled, brilliantly operated organizations in sports history. He was surrounded by stars, and, every bit as importantly, lesser players who knew how to make the stars shine that much brighter. Chamberlain, more often than not, was left to do it by his lonesome, and he didn’t gain any brownie points by broadcasting an exceptionally well-earned degree of arrogance about his abilities; I imagine Neil Armstrong also occasionally brags about walking on the moon.
It was only when the Lakers set then-records for consecutive wins and the most wins in a season, then took the championship, that people began to grudgingly accept that Chamberlain was the best the game had ever seen. When it comes to winning rings, and solidifying your reputation, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have Jerry West giving you a hand at point guard.
The word “superstar” gets bandied about far too often in modern sports, but if anyone who’s played basketball in the past 50 years deserves the title, it’s Wilt Chamberlain. He wasn’t looking down on everybody just because he was tall. There was a pedestal permanently affixed to his sneakers.
Paul Tatara
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