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There has never been a night to equal, or even challenge, March 2, 1962 -- not by any single individual in a team sport. The performer was already bigger than life, but the performance guaranteed the legend.
The Golden State Warriors, one of the NBA's original franchises which began play in 1946 in Philadelphia, paid tribute to that night last year when they recorded a special round-table discussion on audio tape. The following is a written account of the details furnished on that extraordinary recording.
Rumor has it that there are some dedicated conspiracy theorists who insist Wilt Chamberlain never really scored 100 points in a single NBA game. There is no film of it, is there? There are no old black-and-white television images. It took nearly 25 years, in fact, before somebody came up with a scratchy recording of what is purported to be the live radio broadcast of Chamberlain's heroic effort. And what's this about the game taking place in some basketball Brigadoon known as Hershey, Pa.? That's not exactly Madison Square Garden, you know. It's all pretty fishy, if you ask some people. Where's Oliver Stone when you need him?
But before anybody takes this grumbling too seriously, we had better check in with a few determined souls who have spent the better part of their lives dealing with the fallout of the momentous events that took place on March 2, 1962.
Don't tell Harvey Pollack it was all some sort of myth. The way Pollack figures, he was the busiest man in Hershey that night, busier even than Wilt himself. Pollack kept the Philadelphia Warriors' statistics, handled their public relations and wrote up the game for the Associated Press, UPI and the Philadelphia Inquirer (which decided to save its basketball writer's per diem that night). Afterwards, Pollack raced to the locker room, wrote the number 100 on a piece of paper and handed it to Chamberlain to hold up for photographers.
"My wife tells me it's better than any of my handwriting she's ever seen," Pollack said.
And don't tell Darrall Imhoff it was all some sort of hallucination, either. The former center for the New York Knicks has spent 35 years insisting he did not -- DID NOT -- give up 100 points to Chamberlain. Imhoff may have started the game, but he quickly got into foul trouble and was on the bench for more than half of it. Much of Chamberlain's output, Imhoff said, came against Cleveland Buckner.
And lastly, don't try to get Chamberlain to play along with the scenario. There might have been a time in his life when he was a little embarrassed about how his entire storied career seems to have been summed up in one mythical night, but not any more.
"As time goes by, I feel more and more a part of that 100-point game," Chamberlain said. "It has become my handle and I've come to realize just what I did. People will say to a little kid, 'See that guy right there? He scored 100 points in a game.' I'm definitely proud of it. But it wasn't a single man's achievement. The guys on my team went above and beyond the call of duty to make it happen."
It happened, and nothing in the history of team sports rivals it. Chamberlain left a permanent mark on the game of basketball -- on all of sports, really -- in a way so utterly unique that there is no meaningful way to draw any comparisons. Where is there a one-day performance to rival it? Who else has left all challengers so far behind? Who else has ever outdone HIMSELF in such a manner? No where. No one. Only Wilt.
But despite the astonishing nature of Chamberlain's achievement, there is a certain quality of inevitability about it, too. His performance that night did not rise out of a vacuum. It was not a total aberration. Chamberlain was nearing the end of a season when he would establish a mark that is, if anything, even more impressive than 100 points in a game. In 1961-62, Chamberlain averaged -- AVERAGED -- 50.4 points per game.
Chamberlain had already broken the single-game scoring record twice that season. On Dec. 8, in a triple-overtime game against the Los Angeles Lakers in Philadelphia, Chamberlain scored 78 points to break Elgin Baylor's record of 71. And on Jan. 13, Chamberlain scored 73 points at home against the Chicago Bulls to break Baylor's record without the need of an extra period.
During the season, Chamberlain scored 60 or more points 18 times, and between Feb. 13 and Feb. 28 he scored more than 60 points six times. The world may not have been ready for him to score 100 points on March 2, but Chamberlain certainly was.
Perhaps the most intriguing unanswered question surrounding the game is how many points Chamberlain might have scored if he had had any sleep the night before.
He was living in New York at the time and on the night of March 1, he went out on a late date. Chamberlain has graciously not offered us the precise details of that occasion, but he has said he never got to bed before catching a train to Philadelphia at 8 a.m. He went to lunch with friends and by then it was almost time to catch the team bus to Hershey, the site of the Warriors' preseason training camp where the team played several "home" games each season.
The teams had several hours to kill before the game and Chamberlain spent some time at an arcade in the Hersheypark Arena playing pinball and doing some target shooting.
"It seemed like whatever I touched, I was breaking record after record," he said. "I just knew I was on."
As the game began, there was another indication that this might be Chamberlain's night. Despite his status as one of the worst free-throw shooters in NBA history -- he had a .511 career average -- Chamberlain was on fire from the start. He hit his first nine free-throw attempts, 21 of his first 22 and finished with 28 of 32. Asked later how he could explain his record night at the line, Chamberlain said simply, "I can't."
As for his performance from the field, there was simply no stopping him -- certainly not by the Knicks. New York's starting center, Phil Jordan, was out with the flu and that left the job of guarding Chamberlain to Imhoff, who was only in his second year in the league, and to Buckner, a 6-7 forward the Knicks used at center in only the most extreme emergencies.
"They said he was 7-1, but I swear he was 7-3 and most of the time he was around 290 or 300 pounds," said Imhoff, who took pride in his defense but knew when he was overmatched. "It was like holding up a tree that had been cut and was about to fall down. You had to keep the thing from collapsing on you. You're in a defensive crouch and his No. 13 is in your eye and he's pushing and you're trying to hold him back. I remember many a time I never took a step, yet I moved into the hoop. My sneakers were smoking."
But Chamberlain wasn't only scoring from close range that night. Many of his baskets were fadeaway jump shots that were uncanny coming from a man of his bulk.
"Wilt used to bank shots off the board and we used to get upset about it because we wanted him to turn in," Warriors guard Al Attles said. "But some nights he would get going on that shot and it would be almost impossible to stop."
Any chance the Warriors and the Knicks might play a competitive basketball game ended early as Philadelphia raced off to a 19-3 lead. By the end of the first quarter, Philadelphia led 42-26 and Chamberlain had 23 points. At halftime, Chamberlain had 41, which excited the crowd but gave no real indication of what was to come. Not even to Chamberlain.
"I'd often come into the dressing room at halftime with 30 or 35 points," he said. "So 41 was not a particularly big deal."
But Frank McGuire didn't see it that way.
"Wilt is getting free underneath," he told the Warriors. "Let's keep getting the ball to him."
"What Frank did for me was immeasurable," Chamberlain would say more than 30 years later. "What he did was instill in me that what I was doing was right for me and right for the team. He just said, 'Get the ball to the big fellow when he's hot. If he thinks he can score, let him score.' He allowed me to play."
Chamberlain scored 28 points in the third quarter and even though that raised his total to 69, the unthinkable remained unthought.
"It looked like I had a good chance to break my record of 78, but I didn't even think of 100," he said.
Oddly, a man who had a good deal to do with Chamberlain's output wasn't even on the court that night: Warriors public address announcer Dave Zinkoff. Chamberlain scored six points in the opening moments of the final quarter and when, a few minutes later, he broke his own single-game record with 79, Zinkoff announced that fact to the crowd. A roar went up and almost immediately Chamberlain was fouled and made two more shots. Zinkoff said Chamberlain now had 81 points and for the rest of the game he announced Wilt's total. Soon, the fans began booing whenever the Knicks stalled or fouled Chamberlain and youngsters in the audience began to chant, "Give it to Wilt!" and "We want 100!"
"I think that's what changed everything," Attles said of Zinkoff's announcements. "When he started calling '80,' '81,' '83,' I think there was a conscious effort to get the ball in to Wilt. Otherwise, we really wouldn't have been cognizant of it."
With 2:28 left, Chamberlain made a pair of foul shots: 92 points. Moments later, he hit a bank shot from 12 feet: 94 points. The Knicks went into a stall but Guy Rodgers stole the ball and fed it to Wilt: 96 points. With 1:30 remaining, Chamberlain took a pass from York Larese and scored: 98 points. Chamberlain stole the inbounds pass and missed a layup. After two Knick free throws, Rodgers threw a long pass to Chamberlain under the basket. Wilt shot -- and missed. The rebound went to Ted Luckenbill who fed the ball to Chamberlain. Wilt shot -- and missed. Again, Luckenbill got the rebound and he sent the ball out to Joe Ruklick.
"I was free for a moment because there were two guys on Wilt and they were trying to foul Guy and Al," Ruklick said. "Wilt moved like a ballet dancer and got free for an instant and I gave him the pass. He floated up and lifted it off his hand only four or five inches from the basket and it went in softly."
And there it was. 100 points. Fans on the court. Photographers joining them. Zinkoff asking that the floor be cleared so the final 46 seconds of the game could be played.
After the game, Chamberlain rode with several of the Knicks back to his home in New York where the two teams were to play again the following night.
"I fell asleep immediately," he said, "but I kept waking up and I could hear them talking about the game and saying, 'Can you believe what the SOB did to us?' Every time I woke up, they were still talking about what this SOB had done. So when they dropped me off at my door, I said, 'This SOB wants to thank you guys for the ride.'"
Postscript: Two nights later, the Warriors and the Knicks played again, this time in Madison Square Garden. Imhoff fouled out with a minute and a half to go and as he went to the bench he received a standing ovation. He had held Wilt to 54 points. That knocked Wilt's two-game average down to a mere 77.0. And, as Imhoff will attest, the average was real. Understand that he DID NOT allow every point. But he saw them all.
RON RAPOPORT is deputy sports editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and a sports commentator for National Public Radio's Weekend Edition.
