Wilt Chamberlain was larger than life, on and off the court

By MARK HEISLER

Oct. 13, 1999 12 AM PT

Of remarkable people, it is often said they were giants among men. In Wilt Chamberlain’s case, it wasn’t merely a metahor but a fact.

What was Chamberlain’s impact on the game, and especially the pro game?

Impact isn’t a big enough word. It was more than the free-throw lane the NBA widened to make it fair for the other guys, or the rules of the draft it rewrote when he was at Overbrook High, so the hometown Philadelphia Warriors could get him.

It was more that Wilt picked up the pro game and took it out of the small time it was in. It was Wilt and some others, but as with everything, it was Wilt who dominated; Wilt whose rivalry with Bill Russell lit up the airwaves; Wilt who remained the most compelling actor in their morality play in which he would always be Goliath, even as he lost most of the campaigns.

“He was a guy who dominated every arena he was in,” recalled George Kiseda, a former Philadelphia Bulletin and Daily News sportswriter who covered Chamberlain for years.

“By arena, I mean room, restaurant, conversation, dressing room, hall, lobby. He was a guy who was a lot of fun to be around.”

Chamberlain and Russell, the names are entwined now like Williams and DiMaggio, Mays and Mantle. They did for the NBA in the ‘60s what Magic Johnson and Larry Bird would do in the ‘80s; they breathed life into it.

When Chamberlain turned pro in 1959, the NBA was derided as a bush league, a YMCA league, or as an NFL owner once sneered, eight schleppers running teams out of a phone booth. Minneapolis, Syracuse and Cincinnati were still in the league, the western frontier ended at St. Louis and three of the four teams in each conference made the playoffs.

In the spring of 1962, Chamberlain’s third season, when he scored his record 100 points against the New York Knicks in the second game of a doubleheader at Hershey, Pa., there wasn’t a single reporter from New York or Philadelphia there. Neither the Knicks nor Warriors even had a publicist on hand.

Those weren’t bad numbers Chamberlain put together that season: 50.4 points a game, still the record; 25.7 rebounds, behind only his 27.2 and 27.0 the two seasons before; and, perhaps most amazing of all, 48.5 minutes a game. An NBA game is only 48 minutes long. In effect, Wilt had played almost every minute of every game and most of the overtimes too.

He may or may not have been the game’s greatest player--an honor no one was in any hurry to bestow on him in his lifetime--but he was certainly its greatest force.

Of the 68 top scoring games in NBA history, Wilt has 49. Of the top 45 rebounding games, he has 25.

But what are records and titles in the end, except data for barroom arguments? The hold that a man had on the minds of his peers, now that’s something to consider.

His friends regarded him with warmth. Russell may have been the great winner, but he was angry and aloof. Chamberlain may have been a man’s man, but he was fun to be around, quick to laugh and delighted his friends.

On the court, Chamberlain’s peers regarded him with sheer awe and outright fear. NBA owners, no less impressed, kept trying to lure him out of retirement as late as the mid-’80s, when he was going on 50.

In 1982, when he was 45 and Philadelphia 76er owner Harold Katz was hot after him, the Houston Chronicle’s George White asked Elvin Hayes if Chamberlain could still play.

“Some things about Wilt, you never forgot,” Hayes said. “He was such an awesome physical specimen. To go up under Wilt Chamberlain, to be down there and look up at him when he’s towering up over you waiting to dunk, was a terrifying picture. To see him poised up there, knowing he was about to sweep down with that big jam . . . that must be the most frightening sight in sports. The ball goes shooting through the net and you better have your body covered up because he could really hurt someone. I was scared. Everyone was scared when he got that look in his eye, that don’t-try-to-stop-this look that he got when he really wanted it. . . .

“I think Russell realized there was no way he could have stopped Wilt if he had been fully intent on making it a two-man game. No one who ever put on a uniform could have done it. When I played him, I kept this foremost in my mind: Above all, don’t make him mad. Don’t embarrass him. You wanted to keep him quiet as long as possible.”

Everything about Chamberlain was memorable. His losses were larger than life, such as the one to the Boston Celtics as a 76er in the 1968 Eastern finals, when he didn’t take a shot from the field in the second half, and the even more famous one a year later, as a Laker to the Celtics in the finals, when he took himself out because of a knee injury and Coach Bill Van Breda Kolff, who hated him, refused to put him back in.

Chamberlain’s blind spots were gigantic, as was his mouth. He got excellent financial advice from the beginning and invested wisely, and he had what we might call his the-heck-with-you money. He always had wind and opinions.

In later years, he bristled at the thought of a now marketing-savvy league hyping players for such things as “triple-doubles.” Wilt probably had a bunch of those, back in the days when no one was counting them. When he was asked to attend a ceremony, congratulating Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for breaking his scoring record, Wilt noted they must have forgot his ceremony, when he pulled ahead of whoever it had been.

He had a special love-hate thing with Abdul-Jabbar, whom he’d befriended as a teen and never forgiven for going his own way. Chamberlain’s displeasure, like everything else about him, knew no bounds.

He named one of his Great Danes “Careem,” but claimed it was because the dog was cream-colored.

“It came off that way [as a jibe at Abdul-Jabbar],” he said once. “It really wasn’t. He should have been so lucky.”

Then there was Wilt’s notorious and finally embarrassing scorekeeping with women. All in all, it was completely unbecoming, but it was pure Wilt.

His friends were positive of one thing. Wilt loved being Wilt and everything that went with it.

He was Wilt to the end that came so suddenly and seems so premature. His hair had receded a little and there was gray in his mustache, but he still looked scary in the tank tops he wore everywhere, as if he could still play.

People are asking now if it wasn’t sad he didn’t stay in the game, but I don’t think so. He was around. He had his say. This was the way he wanted it, the fame, the money, the NBA owners chasing him, the constant trips to Hawaii, Park City, Europe, back to the giant-size mansion off Mulholland. It’s not easy being a former athlete, but his life looked as if it had its moments.

It’s not important if he was the best, second best or third best, whatever that means or however that’s decided.

He was Wilt. There won’t be any others.

He left a lot of memories behind and one monument: the NBA.

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BY THE NUMBERS

(In NBA)

14 Season

2 NBA titles (76ers 1967, Lakers 1972)

4 Times league’s most valuable player

7 Times led league in scoring

30.1 Career scoring average (second to Michael Jordan’s 31.5)

50.4 Record single-season scoring average (‘61-62)