100 ASTONISHING POINTS : 25 Years Ago Today, Wilt Chamberlain Made NBA History

Twenty five years ago this afternoon, Wilt (the Stilt) Chamberlain, a man riding a hot streak, sat alone on the back seat of the Philadelphia Warriors’ charter bus as it pulled off the Pennsylvania Turnpike and into downtown Hershey, Pa.

Wilt always took the back seat, the better to stretch his legs in the aisle, and the better to either retreat into his private thoughts or take command of the bus in his booming baritone voice.

The Warriors had come to Hershey, as they did about once a month, for a regular-season game, this one against the New York Knicks. The NBA was a league struggling for financial survival and artistic acceptance, and found it necessary on occasion to bring its product to the hinterlands.

Hershey was a chocolate town first, home of Hershey bars, and a hockey town second, home of the Hershey Bears. But before that night was over, Wilt Chamberlain would stamp Hershey on the basketball map in bold letters.

The bus rolled along Chocolate Avenue, lined with street lamps that are replicas of Hershey’s kisses, half of them chocolate colored, half of them foil-wrap colored.

Even though the bus windows were shut tight against the freezing wind, the players could smell the chocolate from the huge Hershey factory.

As the locals like to brag, “We’re healthy because we breathe chocolate.�

Wilt had played cards on the two-hour ride down from Philadelphia, cleaning out several teammates. Usually Wilt was an easy mark for the team’s card sharks, but as mentioned, the man was on a roll.

Some of the players had napped on the trip, but Wilt never slept on a bus, or on a plane or train. His sleeping patterns, like almost everything else about him, were unusual. The previous night, for instance, Chamberlain hadn’t slept at all.

Wilt lived in New York, in an apartment overlooking Central Park, and commuted to work in Philadelphia. Thursday night he’d had a date. They went to Wilt’s nightclub in Harlem. The club closed at 4 a.m., and since Wilt rarely ever got to sleep before sunrise, and since he had to catch an early train to Philadelphia, and since he had companionship, he hadn’t bothered to sleep.

A friend had picked him up at the station in Philadelphia. They’d had lunch, and Chamberlain had caught the team bus at 2 p.m. Two hours later, the Warriors rolled into Hershey.

The bus drove past the Cocoa Inn, the town’s best hotel. Even though the game was four hours away, Warrior management wouldn’t dream of springing for hotel rooms so the players could stretch out and relax for a couple of hours. The NBA of 1962 was very much a no-frills operation.

“I had no assistant coach, and no trainer, and I made all the team’s travel arrangements,� says Frank McGuire, the Warriors’ coach that season. “When we traveled, sometimes we’d borrow the other team’s trainer. One night we got to Syracuse and we needed one roll of adhesive tape, and they wouldn’t give us one, I swear.

“That’s the kind of league it was--Wilt got $100,000 and we didn’t have adhesive tape.�

Not that McGuire or any of the Warrior players resented Wilt’s gigantic salary. On the contrary, Chamberlain was perhaps the most popular player on the tightly knit team.

He was also a national phenomenon--had been since high school--a basketball god playing against mere mortals. Now, in his third NBA season, at age 25, he was outdoing himself. He was averaging 50 points a game.

Wilt bristled when critics said that he scored simply because he was tall, 7-foot 1-inch and a fraction. There were other seven-footers, and none of them scored 50 a night. Or a week.

“Wilt was a little self-conscious about his height,� says Tom Meschery, the Warrior power forward. “Syracuse had a guy named Swede Halbrook, another seven-footer. Wilt and Swede would pair up on the post. One of them would duck down in order to appear shorter, then the other would duck down so he wouldn’t tower over the other, and then the first guy would duck more. I always pictured them doing that until eventually they would both be kneeling.�

The 50 points a game weren’t really Wilt’s fault. McGuire had taken over as coach that season and had redesigned the offense around Chamberlain.

“They missed the playoffs the year before (with Wilt scoring 34.7 a game),� McGuire says. “I figured for us to come close, Chamberlain had to score. That was our offense.�

And it worked, the team was winning, but Wilt was a little uneasy about the way the points were piling up.

“It was toward the end of the season and I remember thinking a lot of times, ‘Hey Wilt, what do you do for an encore after a 50-point average?’ � Chamberlain says. “So I was thinking, ‘I better try to cut this thing back a little bit, this 50-point average. Pass a little more, do something. Because next year they’re gonna be asking for 60 points a game.’

“Do you know what it is to go out on the floor and think, ‘Well, I got to score 50 points tonight’? The fans are coming out to watch me score 50 points, and not only that, we need that to win, y’understand?

“So I kept saying toward the middle of February, ‘Man, I got to cut this thing down , because it’s just getting out of hand.’ I never felt that way in high school. I was averaging 50 there, playing maybe half of every game, and I loved it. But in the pros it started to build a lot of pressure on me that I didn’t particularly like.�

It hadn’t helped that Wilt had scored an NBA-record 78 points three months before--against the Lakers, in triple overtime--and 73 two months before.

“That’s nothing,� McGuire told the press after the 78-pointer. “He’ll score 100 some night.�

But there was no particular reason to think that March 2, in Hershey, might be the night. The Knicks weren’t a strong team. In fact, they had the third-worst record in the league, but Knick Coach Eddie Donovan was determined not to be embarrassed by Wilt the Stilt. Donovan had been quoted that week as saying that instead of trying to out-muscle the strongest player in the league, the Knicks would employ small, fast guys and run Wilt to death.

The Warrior players were incredulous. Warrior forward Paul Arizin, a very quiet veteran who rarely commented on anything, laughed out loud.

“Doesn’t Donovan know Wilt can run faster and longer than anyone in the league?� Arizin said.

Wilt just smiled.

“Guy (Rodgers, Warrior guard) and me just loved to run,� Wilt says. “I mean, running was a way of life for us. The only time I got a chance to dunk my first year in pro basketball was mainly off the fast break, getting the rebound, giving it to Guy, beating everyone downcourt and Guy would do about 4,000 moves and flip the ball back to me, and I’m in for the jam.�

Wilt was a race horse. He had amazing stamina, enormously long strides, and he was fast, as fast as point guard Rodgers.

“If you didn’t get out of his way, he’d run you over,� says Al Attles, the other guard on that team. “You’d be leading the break and you’d hear this big, deep voice behind you, telling you which side of the floor he was on. So you’d make sure you’d get on the other side. He was just a phenomenal athlete.�

The bus pulled up to the Hershey Sports Arena four hours before game time. The pregame meal, as usual on the road, would be arena hot dogs, whenever the vendors heated up their wares.

While waiting for their hot dogs, Wilt and some teammates headed for a penny arcade area in the lower level of the Arena. Wilt went to work on a shooting gallery game. According to legend, and to Wilt, he proceeded to shatter the record score for the machine, a record verified by a doorman who had been there for years.

True story? Chamberlain doesn’t lie. Although, as Meschery says, “Wilt did everything in grandiose proportions. Even his truths were larger than truths.�

But who can doubt Wilt’s shooting-gallery story? He was hot that night. You could look it up.

The Hershey Sports Arena was 25 years old, having been dedicated in 1936, four months after Wilt was born. It was a drafty but well-maintained concrete building, and it held more people than the town did. The population of Hershey was about 7,500 and the Arena seated just under 9,000 for basketball. That Friday night it was about half full, 4,124 fans.

The Warriors didn’t enjoy much of a home-court advantage. Their preseason training camp was in Hershey, but at the high school gym. And the local fans, most of them more attuned to hockey, were fairly sedate and nonpartisan at Warrior games.

It didn’t appear that they had much to get excited about this night, either. It was too late in the season for the second-place Warriors to catch the Boston Celtics, who had already clinched the Eastern Division title. The Knicks were going nowhere.

One of the three Philadelphia newspapers, the Inquirer, hadn’t even bothered to send a reporter to the game. It would get the game story from Warrior publicity man Harvey Pollack, who was also serving as a stringer for United Press International and the Associated Press, and was the game’s official statistician.

Wilt scored 41 points in the first half, and nobody blinked. McGuire, for one, had come to count on remarkable performances from Wilt every game.

“Sports Illustrated ran a story on me before the season,� McGuire says. “The title was, ‘A Coach With a Problem.’ They said Wilt was uncoachable. Well, he was the nicest problem I ever had.�

It was McGuire’s first season in the NBA. He left his job at North Carolina mainly for the challenge of coaching Chamberlain. They became close friends. On the road, McGuire would frequently join Wilt for postgame room-service dinners. It was a tough season for McGuire. He had a palsied 10-year-old son, and the NBA schedule kept McGuire away from home too much for his liking.

“I wasn’t used to the travel,� McGuire says. “It would really get me down. I remember one night about 2 o’clock, Wilt came by my hotel room, a tiny little room. I was pretty depressed. Wilt said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘Look at this room .’ He handed me his key and said, ‘Take my room, down at the end of the hall. It’s much better.’ He insisted.�

At halftime, McGuire took no note of Wilt’s 41 points. But Eddie Donovan did. The Knick coach fumed at the prospect of Wilt embarrassing his club by having a monster scoring night.

Working in Wilt’s favor was the absence of Phil Jordan, the Knicks’ regular center, out with the flu. Darrall Imhoff, a 6-9 backup center, got into early foul trouble, so Cleveland Buckner, a rail-thin, 6-8 1/2 reserve forward, came in to guard Wilt. Buckner had lots of help. Wilt was always guarded by a committee, every game. No pro player before or since faced the gang defenses thrown at Wilt. And this was 1962, before the dawning of the NBA’s finesse era. Every team had two or three marginally talented hatchet men.

“Wilt got hit in the face more than any human I ever saw,� McGuire says. “And he never threw an elbow (in retaliation) in his life.�

OK, once. Meschery remembers Wilt decking massive Clyde Lovellette with a punch that traveled about five inches. “Lovellette dropped like a dead ox,� Meschery said.

Even though Chamberlain weighed about 280 and was enormously strong, he always retaliated simply by piling up points, rebounds and blocked shots in incredible numbers.

On that night in Hershey, he also retaliated in a most un-Wilt-like manner. He made free throws. An embarrassingly poor career free-throw shooter--51.1%--Wilt made 28 of 32. He also had his other shots working--the fall-away jumper, usually banked softly off the glass from about 15 feet; the finger roll--to picture this shot, flip a wad of paper underhanded into a trash can as you stroll past--and the famed Dipper-dunk.

Imhoff claims that the Hershey Sports Arena rims were very soft. But as former newsman Jim Heffernan, who covered the game for the Philadelphia Bulletin, says, “Wilt must have played on soft rims more than once in his career.�

Chamberlain scored 28 points in the third quarter. Depending on one’s point of view, it was near the end of this quarter that the ballgame turned into either a magical piece of sports history or an ugly parody of basketball.

Dave Zinkoff, the Warrior public address announcer, started giving a running total of Wilt’s points at about the 84 mark. Zinkoff, who died last year, was famous for his theatrical delivery. As PR man Pollack says, “Zink was in his glory that night. I’d give him the total--Zink had trouble counting past 10--and he would really drag it out--’That’s eight-tee fffffff-ooooo-rrrrrrr!!’ �

Chamberlain sensed that he was onto something big. Wilt always kept his stats in his head--points, rebounds, blocks, assists--but he says he lost count of his points somewhere in the 70s that night.

“But at that time, everybody else was telling me how many I had, so there was no way I could not know,� Chamberlain says. “I honestly don’t remember even caring about 100. I didn’t have a great desire for the 100 points. Why should 100 points make any difference? It wasn’t gonna make me famous.

“The only difference (the mounting point total) made was, it was the first time I can remember being involved in a game where (the opponents) weren’t concerned about winning the game. In the second half, they were just concerned about stopping me from scoring a certain amount of points. In fact, I don’t think they even wanted to win the game. Their game was stopping Wilt.�

Indeed, the game became secondary. The Warriors would win, 169-147. They led by 11 at halftime and by 19 at the end of three quarters, but Wilt became the game.

Fouling became the strategy. The Knicks say the Warriors started to intentionally foul to get the ball back quickly and feed Wilt. The Warriors say the Knicks started it, deliberately fouling any Warrior in order to keep the ball out of Wilt’s hands. In response to the Knicks’ fouling, more than once the Warriors inbounded the ball by throwing full-court passes directly to Wilt.

Willie Naulls, a Knick forward and a friend of Wilt, told The Times 12 years ago that Donovan ordered his players not to take a shot, not even an open layup, until the 24-second clock was near expiration. Naulls said he refused to go along.

“I wasn’t going to be part of that fooling around,� Naulls said in 1975. “That fouling, playing keep-away, that wasn’t basketball, and I told Donovan that. He said, ‘You’re entitled to think that way, but while you’re thinking about it, sit down.’ �

Naulls’ memories of the game, and Donovan’s, have grown fuzzy. But Donovan says of Richie Guerin, the Knicks’ veteran guard, “No question there was a certain amount of pride involved. Richie would have fouled the referee if that would’ve helped.�

Chamberlain went into the fourth quarter needing 31 points for 100. And he wasn’t going to rest. Chamberlain played every minute of every game that season.

“The first time we spoke before the season, I asked him how long he wanted to play,� McGuire says. “He said, ‘Forever.’ I said, ‘No, I mean how long each game .’ He said, ‘When you take me out and I’m sitting next to you, I’m not scoring or rebounding. And when I go back in, it takes another three minutes to get this body going.’ He didn’t even want to sit down during timeouts because he’d stiffen up.�

So Wilt played on, but not with any record in mind. If he wasn’t gunning for 100, however, his teammates were. They began to feed him constantly, even more than they usually did.

“My teammates had by far a bigger hand in the last 30 or so points than I did,� Chamberlain says. “I mean, they made a concentrated effort to make it happen. I think guys like Arizin and Guy Rodgers and Al Attles, most of the guys really liked me. I think it meant a lot to them to see me get the record. They just kept giving me the ball, and then I started missing some shots. I don’t know whether I was getting the old lump, or what, but I started missing. And it wasn’t getting to be easy.�

The Arena was crackling. Zink was smoking. Wilt was working. The Knicks were seething. The Warriors were digging. The fans were chanting.

“Give it to Wilt!� the fans chanted. Then they chanted, “We want a hundred!�

“Everybody kind of got into it,� Chamberlain says. “You almost wanted to do it now just to get it done, y’understand?�

Neither team filmed the game, because the lighting in the Arena was sub-par, so the only electronic evidence of the game is a scratchy recording of Warrior broadcaster Bill Campbell’s stretch call.

With 1:01 left and Wilt at 98, Guerin made two free throws. Rodgers, pressured in the backcourt, threw long to Wilt, who missed inside. Warrior Tom Luckenbill got the rebound and fed Wilt, who missed again. Luckenbill rebounded again and passed to Joe Ruklick, who passed to Chamberlain . . .

“A Dipper-dunk!� Campbell yelled. “The fans are all over the floor! One hundred points for Wilt Chamberlain!�

The fans stormed the court and some tried to grab the ball, but Wilt tucked it in and ran for the dressing room. McGuire remembers seeing two fans jump on Wilt’s back, and Wilt didn’t slow down.

There were 46 seconds left on the game clock, but the officials made no attempt to finish the game.

In the locker room, as his teammates celebrated, Wilt was almost despondent. Almost embarrassed.

He looked at the stat sheet and saw that he had taken 63 shots. For reference, Michael Jordan’s high in shots for a single game this season is 43. Wilt knew the 63 wouldn’t help his reputation.

He’d shot a nice 57.1%--he finished the season with the league’s second-best shooting percentage, 50.6%--but says, “I would’ve felt a little better about the 100 points if it was one of those really hot nights for me, if I had made, say, 36 for 46. I once went five games without missing a shot, then I missed, then I went three more games without missing. I mean, things like that , I enjoy. But 63 shots ? I mean, that’s the kind of shots that Rick Barry would be throwing up there.�

Chamberlain drove back to New York that night with Naulls. Wilt drove the entire way, as always. When Wilt is in a car, nobody else ever gets behind the wheel. Sometime around 2 a.m. they pulled up to Wilt’s nightclub, “Big Wilt’s Small Paradise.�

Patrons and employees flooded out into the street to greet the Big Dipper.

“There was a celebration of a sort among people who really loved Wilt,� Naulls says.

“Never once, in all the years I’ve known Wilt has he ever brought up the subject of that game,� says Al Attles, a close friend. “He never talks about it.�

That night Attles made all eight of his shots and his only free throw. A few years ago, Wilt gave Attles the game ball, mounted on a base that is inscribed, “For a person who did everything right at the wrong time.�

For years, Wilt hated the record.

“Maybe I became negative about it because I wanted to know why they were giving me so much credit on scoring 100 points,� he says. “There were a lot of cute things that I’ve done. For instance, it’s pretty tough when you’re not a guard and don’t control the ball, to lead the league in assists (1967-68 season). That’s a turn-on to me. I just had done so many more things in basketball that had more meaning to me.�

To some, the high-scoring Chamberlain represented everything that was wrong with the NBA. Critics saw him as a selfish point-scorer. Wilt heard the criticism. It hurt. It still does. To this day, he will recite his rebound and assist stats at length, and talk about his defense, building a case for his all-around game.

“I never thought about it until now, but I think that might be it,� Chamberlain says. (The 100-point game) kinda highlighted a little negativeness. You get downgraded all the time because you’re a scorer. Hey, some body’s got to put the ball in the goddamn basket. God knows, when I was scoring I was doing a whole lot of other things. I had 25 rebounds that night. I like to think of myself as an all-around player, and I think I was. I really do.

“So sometimes maybe I subconsciously downplayed it (the 100-point game) a little bit. You know, I’ve really grown in a lot of different ways, and I’ve done a lot of different things. Now sometimes I look back at it in amazement. I just say, like, ‘Wow.’ �

Two days after Wilt’s 100-point game, the Knicks and Warriors played again in Madison Square Garden. Imhoff, inspired by the home fans, put the clamps on Wilt.

“He was trying to get another 100,� Imhoff says. “I fouled out with a minute to go, and got a standing ovation because I held him to 54 (58, actually).�

The Warriors won the game by two.

Imhoff, who played 12 seasons in the NBA and probably deserves a better fate than to be remembered erroneously as the man who gave up 100 points in a game, salutes Chamberlain’s awesome ability and presence.

“It was a privilege to have spent 12 years in his armpits,� Imhoff says.

Cleveland Buckner, who played two NBA seasons, would rather be remembered for the 33 points he scored that night. The label of being Wilt’s patsy still rankles Buckner, who says as if it were yesterday, “Everybody’s trying to blame me for it.�

The closest Chamberlain ever came to scoring 100 points after that night was a 73-point night the next season, against the Knicks. No NBA player has ever scored in the 80s or 90s, and besides Wilt, who did it six times, only David Thompson with 73 and Elgin Baylor with 71 ever topped 70. No two players have ever combined to score 100 points in a game.

Yet Wilt says, “It could well have been a 150-point game, if the Knicks had played more of a legitimate game. It’s nothing to brag about, it’s just the way the game was going. I think I maybe could have gotten 100 points in the second half.�

The Warriors moved to San Francisco the next season and Frank McGuire quit to be closer to his son. Chamberlain, who averaged 50.4 points for 1961-62, dropped to 44.8 the next season, then never again averaged 40.

There will be no ceremonies to honor the 25th anniversary of the 100-point game. The Warriors plan nothing. The Philadelphia 76ers plan nothing. And the Hershey Sports Arena, now renamed the Hersheypark Arena, is dark tonight.

The Arena is 50 years old, same as Wilt. Both have aged gracefully, both are well-maintained and in fine shape. At the Arena, there is nothing to commemorate the 100-point game except a photograph in the press room and a small plaque in a banquet room.

The shooting gallery machine on which Wilt set an Arena record 25 years ago tonight is long gone, pushed into retirement years ago by Pac-Man.

Over the years, tall tales have sprung up, no doubt in part because the game was played in relative obscurity. There are five or six different versions of the last shot. Wilt himself is fuzzy on that one. There are rumors that the court was shorter than regulation, although the Arena manager says it is regulation length.

Chamberlain and Attles say people frequently recall that the Warriors lost that game. Sure, Wilt got his points, but he cost his team the game.

Chamberlain says enough people have sworn to him they were in Hershey Sports Arena that night to fill the gym 10 times. Other fans swear they saw the game at Madison Square Garden.

There is even one theory that the game never was played, that it was a hoax. Hershey, Pa.? One hundred points? C’mon. Show us some pictures.

But there is at least one credible witness, one honest man who can attest to the events 25 years ago tonight in Hershey, Pa.

“I can be pretty sarcastic,� says Wilt Chamberlain. “But when people (phony witnesses) tell me they were there, I never correct ‘em, I always let ‘em feel like they saw it. I just say, ‘So you saw it? Hey, well, good. I was there, too.’ �

WILT CHAMBERLAIN’S 100-POINT GAME PHILADELPHIA WARRIORS (169)

Player Pos. Min FGA FGM FGA FTM Reb. Ast. PF Pts. Paul Arizin F 31 18 7 2 2 5 4 0 16 Ed Conlin 14 14 0 0 0 4 1 1 0 Joe Ruklick 8 1 0 2 0 2 1 2 0 Tom Meschery F 40 12 7 2 2 7 3 4 16 Ted Luckenbill 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 Wilt Chamberlain C 48 63 36 32 28 25 2 2 100 Guy Rodgers G 48 4 1 12 9 7 20 5 11 Al Attles G 34 8 8 1 1 5 6 4 17 York Larese 14 5 4 1 1 1 2 5 9 Totals 240 115 63 52 43 60 39 25 169

NEW YORK KNICKS (147)

Player Pos. Min FGA FGM FGA FTM Reb. Ast. PF Pts. Willie Naulls F 43 22 9 15 13 7 2 5 31 Johnny Green F 21 7 3 0 0 7 1 5 6 Cleveland Buckner 33 26 16 1 1 8 0 4 33 Darrall Imhoff C 20 7 3 1 1 6 0 6 7 Dave Budd 27 8 6 1 1 10 1 1 13 Richie Guerin G 46 29 13 17 13 8 6 5 39 Al Butler G 32 13 4 0 0 7 3 1 8 Donnie Butcher 18 6 3 6 4 3 3 5 10 Totals 240 118 57 41 33 60 17 32 147

SCORE BY QUARTERS

Team 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Tot. Philadelphia 42 37 46 44 169 New York 26 42 38 41 147

CHAMBERLAIN’S SCORING BY QUARTERS

Quarter Min FGA FGM FGA FTM Reb. Ast. PF Pts. 1st quarter 12 14 7 9 9 10 0 0 23 2nd quarter 12 12 7 5 4 4 1 1 18 3rd quarter 12 16 10 8 8 6 1 0 28 4th quarter 12 21 12 10 7 5 0 1 31 Totals 48 63 36 32 28 25 2 2 100