Lakers Players

Wilt Chamberlain

Wilton Norman "Wilt" Chamberlain (August 21, 1936 – October 12, 1999) was a National Basketball Association basketball player. Known as Wilt the Stilt (a nickname he hated) or The Big Dipper, he is regarded as one of the greatest and most dominant basketball players of all time for the incredible statistical achievements he attained throughout his playing career.

Chamberlain drew national attention playing at Overbrook High School in West Philadelphia (1951-1955), leading his school to City Championships in 1954 and 1955. He scored 90 points, including 60 points in a 10-minute span, against Roxborough High School. He scored 800 points in the first 16 games of his senior year and was named a high-school All-American. He totaled 2,252 points in his high school career.

He played two years for the University of Kansas (freshmen were then ineligible to play NCAA varsity basketball), where he earned All-American honors twice and led the Jayhawks to the 1957 championship game (which they lost to North Carolina 54-53 in three overtimes).

After a frustrating junior year in which Kansas did not even reach the NCAA Tournament (at the time, teams that had lost their league championship were not invited), he decided to turn pro, citing that he wanted to be paid for being double- and triple-teamed every night. Chamberlain was contracted to the Philadelphia Warriors, who had picked him in 1955 as a territorial pick. However, he was ineligible to play in the NBA until his college class graduated in 1959. In the interim, he played a season with the Harlem Globetrotters. He was listed as the third pick in the NBA Draft but was actually a territorial pick.

In his first year with the Warriors (1960), Chamberlain led the league in scoring, averaging 37.6 points per game, and rebounding, with 27 per game. He became the first of two players (with Wes Unseld, 1969) to be named MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season. The Warriors lost to the Boston Celtics in the Conference Finals that year, which would be a repeated occurrence in Chamberlain's career.

Since the Celtics were in the same Eastern Division as the Warriors, Chamberlain and Co. could not even reach the NBA Finals without finding a way to beat them. The Boston Celtics were at the beginning of their legendary run of winning 11 NBA championships in 13 seasons.

In the 1962 NBA season, Chamberlain averaged his career best 50.4 ppg. As of yet, the closest player other than Chamberlain himself to average as many points per game was Elgin Baylor who averaged 38.3 in that same season.

In 1963, the Warriors relocated to San Francisco, and in 1964 Chamberlain and the San Francisco Warriors lost to the Celtics in the NBA Finals. After that season, Chamberlain was traded back to Philadelphia, where the Syracuse Nationals had recently moved to become the 76ers.

Back in the Eastern Division, Chamberlain's appearance in the finals was thwarted by the Celtics' on-going dynasty. The Eastern Conference Finals that year came down to the final seconds of Game 7, when the Celtics won by one point with a legendary play: when the 76ers' Hal Greer attempted to pass the ball inbounds, John Havlicek stole it to preserve the Celtics' lead.

Chamberlain was the centerpiece of the formidable 1967 Sixers team that included future Hall of Famers Greer and Billy Cunningham, as well as noted players Chet Walker and Luke Jackson. The team roared through its first 50 games at 46-4, en route to setting a (then) record 68 regular-season wins. In the playoffs, they finally knocked off the Celtics (to end their title streak at eight) before going on to capture the NBA title (Chamberlain's first) by defeating the San Francisco Warriors in six games. In that series, Chamberlain scored a relatively modest 17.7 points per game, but snared an incredible 28.7 rebounds per game. In fact, his worst rebounding game in that series was Game 6 with 23. His glass-cleaning feat was made even more astonishing by the fact that the opposing center was top rebounder Nate Thurmond, who himself averaged 26.7 RPG over that series. Chamberlain and Thurmond became the 5th and 6th (and until today, last) players to grab 20+ rebounds in every game of the NBA Finals [1]. In 1980, that 1967 Philadelphia team was voted the NBA's best team during the first 35 years of the league. Chamberlain himself described the team as the best in NBA history. Chamberlain received his third MVP award that season.

In 1967-68, Chamberlain was selected league MVP for his fourth and final time, while leading the league in total assists with 702 (8.6 apg).

The following year, Chamberlain was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, where he was teamed with future Hall-of-Famers Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, creating one of the most prolific basketball scoring machines of all time.

However, Baylor and Chamberlain played only a handful of games together as teammates due to career-ending and season-ending knee injuries. In Wilt's case, the surgeon needed to drill a hole through his kneecap and pass a tendon through it. The recovery from such extensive surgery was long and arduous. The injury also severely limited the number of games that he played against young Milwaukee Bucks center Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). Chamberlain was the only basketball player to ever block one of Abdul-Jabbar's "sky-hook" shots.

The Lakers were heavily favored to win the 1969 NBA Finals against the old, battered Celtics, but then Chamberlain became the victim of one of the most controversial coaching decisions in NBA history. In Game 7, Wilt hurt his leg with six minutes left to play, with the Lakers trailing by nine points. Lakers coach Bill van Breda Kolff took him out, and when Chamberlain wanted to return with three minutes left, Van Breda Kolff decided to bench him until the end. The Celtics won, 108-106. When Chamberlain had asked out of the game, the Lakers had been trailing by nine points, but then mounted a comeback to pull within one by the time he asked back in; this caused some to assume that Chamberlain had not really been injured, but instead had given up and "copped out" of the game when it looked as though the Lakers would lose. Because of this, some branded him a scapegoat and a quitter. Even Bill Russell ridiculed him, which almost caused Chamberlain to end their friendship. However, when Chamberlain's teammate Jerry West heard of Van Breda Kolff's decision, he was utterly disgusted, and passionately defended Chamberlain. Furthermore, even Van Breda Kolff, who never got along with Chamberlain (a factor that some speculate may have played a part in his decision to not put Chamberlain back in—a desire by Van Breda Kolff to prove he could win without Chamberlain), has always himself defended Chamberlain's injury as being fully legitimate.

In 1970, the acquisition of the sharpshooting guard Gail Goodrich helped with the Lakers' offensive firepower with the loss of Baylor. In the NBA Finals, the Lakers were matched up against the New York Knicks, one of the best defensive teams of the post-Russell-Celtics era. Both teams fought a hard, grueling series, but in Game 5, Chamberlain's opposing center Willis Reed suffered a serious thigh injury. The Knicks won that game, but they were demolished in Game 6 with Chamberlain's strong offense, and they looked doomed in Game 7 without their starting center. However, Reed limped onto the court, won the opening tip-off against Chamberlain, and scored the first four points, inspiring his team to one of the most famous playoff upsets of all time. Although Reed was able to play only a fraction of the game, and could hardly move when he did play, Chamberlain still scored only 21 points (his season average had been 27.3) on only 16 shots, quite few in a Game 7. Further, he shot an abysmal 1-of-11 from the foul line, making the game perhaps his greatest on-court failure..

In 1971, the Lakers made a notable move by signing former Celtics star guard Bill Sharman as the head coach. Sharman reinvented the veteran Chamberlain as a defensive stopper. This proved very successful, as Chamberlain was elected to the All-NBA First Defensive Team for the first time in his career, and the Lakers set a new record for most victories in a season, 69, including an astounding 33-game winning streak, the longest in any American professional sport. Chamberlain jokingly claimed to be unimpressed: "I played with the Harlem Globetrotters and we won 445 in a row," he said at the time, "and they were all on the road."

However, Chamberlain and West would win their first and only Lakers title in 1972, notably in the first season without Baylor. The other stars of this team were the forwards, scorer Jim McMillian and rebounding and defense specialist Happy Hairston. In the series against the Knicks, Chamberlain scored 19.2 PPG and was elected Finals MVP mainly due to his incredible rebounding. In the final game, he scored 23 points and had 29 rebounds, despite playing with a badly sprained right wrist. Over the series, he averaged 23.2 rebounds per game, taking in almost a quarter of the series' entire rebound total—at age 36.

The next year, in what would be Chamberlain's final season as a player, at age 37; he still led the league in rebounding with 18.6 per game, while shooting an NBA-record 72.7% field-goal percentage.

I look back and know that my last seven years in the league versus my first seven years were a joke in terms of scoring. I stopped shooting—coaches asked me to do that, and I did. I wonder sometimes if that was a mistake.

—Wilt Chamberlain, speaking to the Philadelphia Daily News
In 1973, the San Diego Conquistadors of the American Basketball Association, a league that had been founded to compete with the NBA, offered Chamberlain a $600,000 contract as player-coach, and Chamberlain accepted. The Conquistadors quickly circulated publicity photos of Chamberlain in a Conquistadors uniform holding an ABA ball. However, Chamberlain still owed the Lakers the option year on his contract, and they sued, arguing that this barred Chamberlain from playing for another team, even though it was in a different league. The case was arbitrated in the Lakers' favor, and Chamberlain was kept off the court. He never played another game in either league.

Chamberlain did coach the Conquistadors in that season, however, and he played on the court in practices and scrimmages with the team.

With an offensive repertoire that consisted of dunks, finger rolls, and a fadeaway jump shot, the 7-foot 1-inch (2.16 m), 275-pound Chamberlain holds nearly 100 NBA records, including the record for most points in a game: 100. He is still the only player to score 4,000 or more points in one season (it has been rare for anyone else to score 3,000). He also recorded a phenomenal 55 rebounds in one game, and averaged 27 rebounds per game that season, setting the all-time record for rebounds in a season, one that still stands and has never been threatened.

From 1959 to 1963 (5 seasons), Chamberlain had a spectacular run, recording 5 of the top 7 (including the top 3) scoring averages of all-time. In 1962, he averaged 50.4 points per game, following that with 44.8 in 1963. His closest rival in this category is Elgin Baylor, who recorded the 4th best scoring average (38.3 in 1962).

Prior to the 1961-62 season, the NBA record for most points in a single game was held by Elgin Baylor of the Lakers, with 71 points. On December 8, 1961, the Warriors played the Lakers; Chamberlain scored 78, breaking Baylor's record, with the game going into triple overtime. Legendary Laker broadcaster "Chick" Hearn often told the story that he asked Baylor after the game whether Baylor was bothered that he'd lost the record in that manner, with Chamberlain having had 15 extra minutes of game time to score the points to reach and then surpass Baylor's previous record 71. According to Hearn, Baylor replied that he was not bothered by it because "one day, that guy is going to score 100."

Less than three months later, on March 2, 1962, in a 169-147 victory over the New York Knicks at Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Chamberlain scored 100 points in a standard regulation game. In fact, it was reported that Chamberlain scored the pivotal basket with 46 seconds remaining in the game, but there was nothing that could be done to stop the relatively small crowd from completely mobbing the floor. No video footage exists of this phenomenal achievement because the game was not televised, although there is an audio recording of the game's radio broadcast.

Chamberlain made 36-of-63 field goals and 28-of-32 free throws; the latter is remarkable because Chamberlain made barely half his free throws during his career. He had no 3-point goals, since at the time; the three-point line had not yet been instituted. Chamberlain initially said that he was "embarrassed" by these stats, proclaiming his shame at taking 63 field goal attempts and making "only" 36.

The game was somewhat controversial because, by all accounts, by the fourth quarter both teams had ceased playing a normal game in which each team actually tries to win the game; rather, the efforts of both teams focused entirely on whether Chamberlain would score 100 points. Instead of trying to score quickly, as a trailing team would normally do in hopes of mounting a comeback, the Knicks began holding the ball to run out the clock. Some say the Knicks began fouling Chamberlain intentionally so that he would have to shoot free throws rather than get closer shots at the basket, and that they would also intentionally foul other Warrior players who had the ball, so that they would have no chance to pass it to Chamberlain. For their part, the Warriors also began fouling Knicks players intentionally, when the Knicks had the ball, in order to stop the clock (that again being the exact opposite of the usual strategy of a team that is leading) and get the ball back for Chamberlain.

The Knicks in this game were led by three players with 30 points each, but still, their cumulative total was topped by Chamberlain.

Chamberlain's 78-point triple-overtime game against the Lakers remained as the second-highest single game point total for over 40 years, until January 22, 2006, when L.A. Lakers guard Kobe Bryant scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors.

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