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We know Wilt registered his 100th point in front of 4,124 fans in Hershey, Pa. We know there were 46 seconds left on the clock after his 99th and 100th points became numbers 168 and 169 for the Philadelphia Warriors.
We know the official boxscore reads 169-147.
But we also have a tape of the radio broadcast that has announcer Bill Campbell calling the score after Wilt's bucket as 169-146. Following the celebration, Campbell picks up the call of the game with 39 seconds left and accounts for four more points -- two Willie Naulls free throws and a Donnie Butcher layup -- and calls the score as 169-150.
But when Campbell returns to the air to give his final summation, he once again said the score was 169-146. What is the explanation? If the score was 169-146 when Wilt scored his 100th point, did the clock operator simply fail to enter the final four points of the game, which could have meant that Campbell was reading an incorrect scoreboard?
Or was the scoreboard simply wrong? Did the scoreboard operator fail to hear the official scorer say the score was 169-147?
And did the game continue, or end after Wilt's 100th point? Even that is in dispute. Campbell said he has "a vague recollection of the game never officially ending."
"I remember the crowd descending all over the court," he said recently, "and my recollection is that they couldn't possibly have played and cleared the floor." Yet the tape has his call of the final seconds.
Some -- including Wilt himself and Harvey Pollack, the official scorer who was the Warriors public relations director and continues to work for the Sixers -- insist the game ended after the 100th Chamberlain point. Others would argue.
"If my memory is correct, they got the players back on the court, got the fans back in the stands and finished the game," remembered Warrior Ed Conlin, who watched the final moments from the bench. "I couldn't swear that the game ended at regulation time or not. I don't think anybody has been in a game that never finished, but . . . who knows?"
It seems nobody does for certain.
Harry Goff, who attended the game, wrote in the Harrisburg Patriot-News that "a dozen or so over-anxious fans rushed on the floor ... and the game was delayed until police cleared the area and play was resumed."
Players, as well, have differing memories. New York's Richie Guerin was "totally shocked and surprised" when he heard there was some indication the game was never completed. Teammate Johnny Green agreed. "It wasn't the case that they stopped the game and gave Wilt the game ball. The game continued."
Philadelphia's second-leading scorer that night, Al Attles, whose brilliant 8-for-8 shooting was reason enough for him to remember the game, recalled that after Wilt's final basket "the fans ran on the floor and the game ended.
"I still think that the game ended before the actual horn blew because there were just too many people on the floor and there was no way they could have gotten them off," said Attles, who continues to work for the Warriors franchise in Golden State as a vice president. "You would think you would remember it."
But, perhaps, not because big scoring nights from Wilt were the rule, not the exception -- Chamberlain regularly scored well over 50 points that season. His unfathomable 50.4 points-per-game average that year was borne of a 78-point performance one night, a 73-point performance on another occasion. A 100-point night was impressive, but not particularly shocking.
Yet there are also dissenting recollections of what happened in the frantic moments after the 100th point. Most accounts indicate players and fans mobbed Wilt after he reached triple-digits.
But Knicks center Darrall Imhoff, who sat on the bench with foul trouble for much of the game but nevertheless remains the man most often associated with "letting" Wilt score 100, remembered that "when Wilt hit 100, they pulled him out of the game and he went to the bench. I do know that after he got his basket the game did continue and went till the end. I don't remember if anybody else scored after that."
Memories have understandably faded and blurred over 35 years. There is no written play-by-play of the game, the game was not on television and only the fourth quarter radio broadcast is on tape.
NBA policy is that the official box score is final. So the final official score is 169-147. But somehow it seems appropriate that a game of such monumental proportions should include some mystery, and that a myth should emerge from a legendary night.
