User:Onomatopoeia/Sandbox Wilt

Wilton Norman "Wilt" Chamberlain (born August 21, 1936, in Philadelphia - died October 12, 1999 in Bel-Air), nicknamed Wilt the Stilt and The Big Dipper, was a professional NBA basketball player for the Harlem Globetrotters, the Philadelphia / San Francisco Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Los Angeles Lakers. The 7'1", 275-pound (eventually surpassing 300 pounds) Chamberlain played the center position and is credited as the one of the most successful and dominant players in the history of the NBA. Chamberlain holds forty-six official NBA all-time records, among them 25 regular-season records, setting yardsticks in many scoring, rebounding and durability categories. Among others, he is the only player in NBA history to average more than 50 points in a season or score 100 points in a single game. He also won seven scoring, nine field goal percentage, and eleven rebounding titles, and once even led the league in assists.

Apart from his outstanding statistical feats, he also had a successful career, making the NBA Finals six times, winning two NBA titles, earning four regular-season Most Valuable Player awards, one NBA Finals MVP award, and being elected into 13 All-Star games and into ten All-NBA First and Second teams. For his outstanding feats, Chamberlain was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, elected into the NBA's 35th Anniversary Team of 1980 and chosen as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History of 1996.

Early years and Overbrook High School
Wilton Norman Chamberlain was born into a big family of nine children. In his early years, Chamberlain was an avid track and field athlete, posting up statistics like a decathlete. As a youth, he high jumped 6 feet, 6 inches, ran the 440 in 49.0 seconds and the 880 in 1:58.3, put the shot 53 feet, 4 inches, and broad jumped 22 feet. However, he soon discovered that basketball was ideally suited for him; when Chamberlain entered Overbrook High School, he was already 6'11". In high school, Chamberlain established himself as one of the most dominant high school players of all time. In his three varsity seasons, Overbrook lost a total of just three games, going 19-2, 18-0 and 19-1 to win two city championships. In addition, Chamberlain broke Tom Gola's high school scoring record by scoring 2,252 points, averaged 44.5 points in his senior year and had three individual games in which he scored 90, 74 and 71 points. In his 90-point game against Roxborough High School, Chamberlain also had an outburst when he scored 60 points in 10 minutes, thus scoring a basket every 12 seconds.



In the days when so-called “big men” like 6'10" Minneapolis Lakers center George Mikan were still a rare breed in the NBA, Chamberlain, who already stood 6'11", terrified his high school opposition. He often towered a foot and more over most of other players on the court. It was also in this period of his life when his three life-long nicknames were born. He hated two of them, “Wilt the Stilt” and “Goliath”, and preferred the more pleasing “The Big Dipper”, allegedly born because he always had to dip his head before entering a room. When Chamberlain left Overbrook in 1955, he had led them to a 56-3 record and two city championships, while averaging 37.4 points. Over 200 universities wanted to recruit the basketball prodigy, but Chamberlain then proclaimed he was going to play college basketball at the University of Kansas.

University of Kansas
In 1955, Chamberlain became a player for the Kansas Jayhawks freshman team under Hall-of-Fame coach Phog Allen. In those times, freshmen could not compete with the varsity squad. In Chamberlain’s debut game for the freshman squad, the freshman Jayhawks were pitted against the varsity Jayhawks, who were favoured to win their conference that year. Chamberlain dominated his older college mates by scoring 52 points (16-35 from the field, 10-12 on free throws), grabbing 29 rebounds and registering four blocks, as recalled in an December 21, 1955 article for  The Sporting News . In that piece, writer Don Pierce wrote a raving essay about Chamberlain, describing him as a gate-magnet who sold out the Jayhawks’ 17,000-seat Allen Fieldhouse, and comparing the new recruit favourably to contemporary NBA great and Kansas grad Clyde Lovellette. In his scouting report, he describes Chamberlain as a seven-foot, lean 225-pound athlete who scored with a mix of bankshots, jumpshots, drives and dunks, and possessed an unsual level of stamina, with the only drawback a lack of defensive timing. As he did at Overbrook, Chamberlain again showcased his great athletic talent. He ran the 100-yard dash in 10.9 seconds, threw the shotput 56 feet, triple jumped more than 50 feet, and won the high jump in the Big Eight track and field championships three straight years. Due to mandatory retirement rules for state employees, Coach Allen was not allowed to coach Chamberlain as a varsity player, and Dick Harp became head coach for the 1956-57 season.

On December 3, 1956, Chamberlain made his varsity debut. In that year, he made the First Team of the All-America squad and led his Jayhawks into the NCAA finals against the Tar Heels of North Carolina. In that game, Tar Heels coach Frank McGuire used several unorthodox tactics to thwart Chamberlain. At the tip-off, he sent his shortest player, Tommy Kearns, in order to rattle him, and the Tar Heels spent the rest of the night triple-teaming Chamberlain, one defender in front, one behind and a third arriving as soon as he got the ball. The game went into three overtimes and North Carolina won 54-53. For years to come, Chamberlain considered it his most devastating loss. However, he was elected the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. Chamberlain never got a shot to improve his 52-point record, because virtually any opponent used a deep zone defense against the Jayhawks, willingly giving up many outside shots to enable double- and triple-teams against him in the post.

However, after two years at Kansas, Chamberlain averaged incredible statistics of 29.9 points and 18.3 rebounds per game; in total, 1,433 points and 877 rebounds, and had led Kansas to two Big Seven championships. With these figures, the public rapidly paid attention to the seven-foot-one basketball sensation. By the time Chamberlain was 21, he had already been featured in the Time, Life, Look and Newsweek magazines, an incredible feat for an amateur player.

Harlem Globetrotters
After a frustrating junior year in which Kansas did not reach the NCAA Tournament -- at the time, teams that had lost their league championship were not invited -- Chamberlain decided to turn pro. Tired of being double- and triple-teamed every night, Chamberlain decided he wanted to be paid for his duties, and wanted to go pro before finishing his senior year. However, in those days, the NBA did not accept players who had not finished their last year of studies. Therefore, Chamberlain was in limbo for a year, and at last decided to play for the Harlem Globetrotters in 1958 for a then-astronomical sum of $50,000.

There, owner Abe Saperstein had to solve a dilemma. His team now had two great centers, namely Chamberlain and Meadowlark Lemon, who filled out the Trotters' "clown prince" role. While Lemon was essential for their comedic routines, Saperstein hardly could afford to bench his newest addition. Saperstein went for a novel approach, playing Chamberlain as a point guard, and thus allowing to show off his shooting, penetrating and passing skills. The 7-1 Chamberlain became arguably the tallest playmaker on any professional level. Chamberlain became member of the Globetrotters team which made history by playing in Moscow in 1959, enjoyed a sold out tour of the USSR and prior to the start of a game at Moscow's Lenin Central Stadium, were greeted by the late General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. In later years, he fondly recalled his time as a Trotter, stating that in that time, every African-American kid looked up to the star-spangled basketball team, and being part of that squad was like "being a movie star". Chamberlain also confessed that after each Trotters appearance, he had a hard time returning back to the NBA, because it was so much fun. In addition, he thought that his Trotters colleague Lemon was the best player he had ever seen. In an 1986 interview, Chamberlain explained that he loved the Trotters so much because he was no longer jeered at or asked to break records, but just one of several artists who loved to entertain the crowd.

Currently, Chamberlain is only one of five Globetrotters who are enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame, the others being William Gates, Connie Hawkins, Marques Haynes, and founder Abe Saperstein. On March 9, 2000, Chamberlain’s number 13 was retired by the Trotters. It was the first-ever jersey to be retired by that team.

Philadelphia / San Francisco Warriors
In the 1959-60 NBA season, Chamberlain finally made his debut as a NBA player, starting for the Philadelphia Warriors. The Warriors’ draft pick was highly unusual, as it was a so-called “territorial pick” despite the fact Chamberlain had spent his college years in Kansas. However, Warriors’s owner Eddie Gottlieb, one of the NBA's founding fathers, argued that Chamberlain had grown up in Philadelphia and had become popular there as a high school player. Because there were no NBA teams in Kansas, he argued, the Warriors held his territorial rights and could draft him. The NBA agreed, marking the only time in NBA history that a player was made a territorial selection based on his pre-college roots.

The Warriors never regretted their choice. From the beginning, Chamberlain brought a level of domination to the game which had seldom been seen before. In his debut game against the New York Knicks, the rookie scored 43 points and 28 rebounds. When the regular season had ended, Chamberlain averaged an incredible 37.6 points and 27.0 rebounds (obliterating the previous regular-season records), earning himself the NBA Most Valuable Player and NBA Rookie of the Year awards. In NBA history, this highly impressive double-trophy debut would only be duplicated once by Wes Unseld, who won both trophies in the 1968-69 NBA season. Chamberlain capped off his rookie season awards by also winning the NBA All-Star Game MVP award with a 23 point, 25 rebound performance for the East. However, in the playoffs, success eluded the young superstar. In the Eastern Conference Finals, the Warriors met the Boston Celtics with legendary center Bill Russell and Hall-of-Fame coach Red Auerbach. Despite outscoring Russell by 81 points, the Warriors lost the series 2 games to 4. Defeat by the Celtics would become a regular occurrence in Chamberlain’s career. In historical perspective, the rivalry between Chamberlain and his perennial nemesis Bill Russell would grow out to become the NBA’s greatest on-court rivalry of all time. It must be noted that Russell and Chamberlain were fierce rivals on court, but also best friends in personal life, similar to later rivals Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.

From the beginning of his NBA career, Chamberlain was seen as a freak of nature, jeered at by the fans, scorned by the media. Decades later, sports journalist Frank Deford of ESPN said that Chamberlain was caught in a lose-lose situation: "If you [Chamberlain] win, everybody says, 'Well, look at him, he's that big.' If you lose, everybody says, 'How could he lose, a guy that size?' " Colleague Larry Schwartz added that Chamberlain made scoring "look too easy"; if anything went wrong, Chamberlain was singled out as the culprit, and recalled he also was the player to boo on road games. Chamberlain himself often said: "Nobody roots for Goliath." In addition, Chamberlain was often victim of hard fouls. Hall-of-Fame Boston Celtics forward Tom Heinsohn said his team ruthlessly exploited his only weakness, free throw shooting, with an early version of the Hack-a-Shaq -- a tactic coined after similarly dominant, but equally poor foul shooter Shaquille O'Neal, in which a poor free throw shooter (i.e. Chamberlain or O’Neal) is intentionally fouled, in the hope that he misses free throws and the team gets an easy ball possession without giving up many points. "Half the fouls against him were hard fouls", Heinsohn continued, "he [Chamberlain] took the most brutal pounding of any player ever". The rookie Chamberlain then shocked the Warriors' fans by saying he was thinking of retiring. He was tired being subject of double- and triple teams, and teams hacking him down with hard fouls. Chamberlain feared to lose his cool one day, a thing which he did not want to happen.

However, in the next season, Chamberlain surpassed his rookie season stats. During the 1960-61 season, he averaged 38.4 points and 27.2 rebounds per game, becoming the first player to break the 3,000-point barrier and the first (and still only) player to break the 2,000-rebound barrier (with 2,149) for a single season. Chamberlain also won his first field goal percentage title, and set the all-time record for rebounds in a single game with 55. However, Chamberlain’s Warriors again failed to convert his stellar play into team success, as the Warriors this time bowed out against the Syracuse Nationals of Hall-of-Famer Dolph Schayes in a three game sweep.



Chamberlain's took his game to even greater heights in his third season, as he set all-time records which have never been threatened since. In 1961-62, he scored a mind-boggling 50.4 points and grabbed 25.7 rebounds per game &mdash; Chamberlain's 4,029 regular-season points making him the first and only player to break the 4,000-point barrier. To place this in perspective the only player other than Chamberlain to break the 3,000-point barrier is Michael Jordan, who scored 3,041 in the 1986-87 NBA season. Chamberlain once again broke the 2,000 rebound barrier by grabbing 2,052. In addition, Chamberlain was on the hardwood for an average of an equally mind-boggling 48.5 minutes, playing 3,882 of his team's 3,890 minutes. On March 2, 1962, Chamberlain delivered another incredible performance and became the first player to score 100 points in a single NBA game, in the 169-147 victory of his Warriors against the New York Knicks. To date, none of these records have ever been threatened. If Chamberlain had never played, the best scoring average would have been scored by Elgin Baylor (38.3 points), the next best rebounding performance from a player other than Chamberlain is Bill Russell with 24.7 in 1963-64, and the next highest single game total is Kobe Bryant's 81 points. His incredible feats in the 1962-63 season were later subject of the book Wilt, 1962 by Gary M. Pomerantz (2005), who used Chamberlain as a metaphor for the uprising of Black America.

In addition to Chamberlain's regular season accomplishments, he scored 42 points in the NBA All-Star Game (still the all-time record) on 17-23 shooting and pulled down 24 rebounds. However, the Warriors stranded again in the playoffs with 3-4, again succumbing to Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics.

In the next 1962-63 NBA season, the Warriors had relocated from Philadelphia to San Francisco to become the San Francisco Warriors. Chamberlain continued his incredible array of statistical feats, scoring 44.8 points and grabbing 24.3 rebounds per game that year. However, despite his incredible statistics, the Warriors missed the playoffs. In the following season of 1963-64 Chamberlain had another superb season with 36.9 ppg / 22.3 rpg, and the San Francisco Warriors went all the way to the NBA Finals, but then succumbed to the fantastic Boston Celtics team of Bill Russell again, this time 1-4. In the Russell-Chamberlain matchups, Russell now had a 3-0 post-season edge a despite getting outplayed regularly on a statistical level.

In the following season, the Warriors ran into financial trouble. At the 1965 All-Star break, Chamberlain was traded back to Philadelphia to the Philadelphia 76ers, the new name of the relocated Syracuse Nationals, who had left Syracuse to move to Philadelphia. In return, the Warriors received Paul Neumann, Connie Dierking, Lee Shaffer and $150,000. When Chamberlain left the Warriors, owner Franklin Mieuli said: “Chamberlain is not an easy man to love […] but the fans in San Francisco never learned to love him. Wilt is easy to hate […] people came to see him lose.”

Philadelphia 76ers
After the trade, Chamberlain found himself in a promising Sixers team that included guards Hal Greer, a future Hall of Famer, and talented role players Larry Costello, Chet Walker and Lucious Jackson. Chamberlain again was incredible, posting stats of 34.7 ppg and 22.9 rpg for the entire season. However, as with the Warriors, Chamberlain’s Sixers team was unable to power past the seemingly unbeatable Celtics, with Bill Russell’s team beating Chamberlain’s squad soundly with 4-1 and establishing the Russell-Chamberlain score at 4-0 in six years.

In the 1965-66 NBA season, the Sixers posted a record 55-25 regular season, and for his strong play, Chamberlain was handed his second MVP award. In that season, the giant center had again dominated his opposition by scoring 33.5 points and 24.6 rebounds a game, leading the league in both categories. In the Eastern Conference Finals that year, the Sixers fought the Celtics again, and they split the first six games. The decision 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. Again, Bill Russell’s team had eluded Chamberlain, for the fifth time in seven years. According to Chamberlain, that was the time that people started calling him “loser”.



Prior to the 1966-67 NBA season, Sixers coach Alex Hannum talked to the center and persuaded him to change his style of play. Loaded with so many other players who could score, such as future Hall-of-Famers Hal Greer and new recruit Billy Cunningham, Hannum wanted Chamberlain to concentrate more on defense. As a consequence, Chamberlain's averaged a career-low 24.1 points, but he led the league in rebounds (24.2), ended third in assists (7.8), had a record shattering .683 field goal accuracy, and played strong defense. For these feats, Chamberlain earned his third MVP award. The Sixers charged their way to an then-record 68-13 season, including a record 46-4 start, and in this season, Chamberlain set yardsticks in field goal accuracy. In February 1967, he scored 35 consecutive field goals without a miss, and in that year, also became the first and only NBA player in history to attempt 15 or more field goals and make them all, going 18-18, 16-16 and 15-15 in three different games. The Sixers easily defeated the Boston Celtics with 4-1 in the Eastern Conference Finals; after five frustrating losses, Chamberlain had finally vanquished his nemesis Bill Russell. Then, the Sixers defeated San Francisco 4-2 in the 1967 NBA Finals. Chamberlain at last had won his first championship. 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 board-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 last) players to grab 20+ rebounds in every game of the NBA Finals. In 1980, the 1967 Philadelphia team was voted the NBA's best team of the first 35 years of the league. Chamberlain himself described the team as the best in NBA history. In 2002, writer Wayne Lynch wrote a book about this remarkable Sixers season, Season of the 76ers, centering on Chamberlain.

In the 1967-68 NBA season, Chamberlain continued his focus on team play. He registered “only” 24.3 points and 23.8 rebounds a game, and his free throw shooting sank to an abysmal .380 for the season. However, the 76ers had the best record in the league for the third straight season, and Chamberlain made history by becoming the first and only center in NBA history to finish the season as leader in assists. His 702 assists beat the runner-up, Hall-of-Fame point guard Lenny Wilkins, by 23. For these feats, Chamberlain won his fourth and last MVP title. However, Chamberlain's extremely unselfish style of play led to different sorts of frustration. In the 1968 Eastern Division Finals, the Sixers were pitted against Bill Russell's Boston Celtics. The Sixers took a 3-1 lead, but the Celtics tied the series. In the second half of Game 7, Chamberlain did not attempt a single shot from the field, and the Sixers lost the game and the series. Asked later for the reason, he simply stated that coach Hannum had not told him to shoot. So, Bill Russell’s Celtics took the title, and Chamberlain was now 1-6 in series against his perennial nemesis.

After that season, coach Alex Hannum left the Sixers to coach the Oakland Oaks in the newly-founded ABA. Chamberlain then asked for a trade, and Sixers general manager Jack Ramsay traded Chamberlain for Darrall Imhoff, Archie Clark and Jerry Chambers. The motivations for this move remain in dispute. According to sports writer Roland Lazenby, a journalist close to the Los Angeles Lakers, Chamberlain got into a nasty dispute with the 76ers' owners, Ike Richman and Irv Kosloff. Chamberlain was promised by Richman a part of the club, but Richman died before the deal was completed. When Kosloff became sole owner, he refused to honor Richman's agreement with Chamberlain, infuriating the superstar. He threatened with retirement, and reached a truce with Kosloff to play out the season and then contemplate the future. However, according to Dr. Jack Ramsay, who was the Sixers general manager then, Chamberlain volunteered to be player-coach if he [Ramsay] would become his assistant. Ramsay discussed it with owner Irv Kosloff and got the green light, but then Chamberlain changed his mind and demanded to be traded to the Lakers, threatening he would jump to the ABA. In any case, Ramsay made the trade, but often wondered what might have been if his star player had stuck to his plan. In any case, that trade qualifies as one of the most lopsided NBA trades ever, as the Sixers traded the most dominant player of his generation for three role players, and helped send the Sixers from a stellar 62-20 record to an atrocious 9-73 record in the span of five seasons.

Los Angeles Lakers


In Los Angeles, Chamberlain joined a Lakers squad which shared the same fate as him, namely being perennially beaten by the Boston Celtics. Up to 1968, the team of future Hall-of-Famers Elgin Baylor and Jerry West had gone 0-6 in NBA Finals against Bill Russell’s team. With the new star center, the Lakers became instant favourites to win the 1969 NBA Finals. However, not everybody in Los Angeles greeted Wilt Chamberlain with open arms. The Sport Magazine (March 1969) publicly doubted their ability to mesh with each other, and the press tried to sow enmity between Chamberlain and West, claiming that West did not want Chamberlain as a teammate. However, West, who was smarting from a long string of NBA Finals losses against the sheer invincible Celtics, lauded Chamberlain as a "true center" who helped "make me [West] a better player".

However, Chamberlain did soon clash with Lakers coach Bill van Breda Kolff. The coach feared that the dominant low post presence Chamberlain would disrupt his Princeton-style tactics, which relied on fast player movement, all five sharing the ball. In particular, van Breda Kolff accused Chamberlain of slacking off in practice, and for “parking” in the low post, blocking the drives of highly prolific slasher Baylor. In return, Chamberlain loathed van Breda Kolff because he felt he straight-jacketed him into a scheme which took away his stats. The tensions flared up so high that allegedly at one point, coach and center shouted at each other at the top of their voices, and Elgin Baylor had to throw himself between both to prevent a fistfight. Siding against Chamberlain, the press was quick to point out the 32-year-old Chamberlain’s “worsening” stats — Chamberlain averaged 20.5 points and 21.1 rebounds a game that season — his then astronomical $250,000 a year salary and billed him as an unthankful, aging has-been.

However, the Lakers stormed through the playoffs and were heavily favored to win the 1969 NBA Finals against the aging Celtics, but then Chamberlain became the victim of one of the most controversial coaching decisions in NBA history. After splitting the first six games, in Game 7, Chamberlain hurt his leg with six minutes left to play, with the Lakers trailing by nine points. Lakers coach 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, and as a testament how hard unlikely the win had been, Jerry West of the Lakers became the first – and of 2007, only – NBA Finals MVP of the losing team. It 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. However, Jerry West was disgusted at Van Breda Kolff's decision, and passionately defended Chamberlain. This also marked the low points of the friendship between Chamberlain and Russell, who accused him of unsportsmanlike conduct. Only years later, they patched things up. Because Russell retired after that season, the legendary Russell-Chamberlain rivalry came to an end, with Chamberlain regulary outscoring his rival, but with Russell winning 7-1 series against his best friend. This was also the last Van Breda Kolff Lakers game, as he was replaced by Joe Mullaney in the next season.

In his second Lakers year, Chamberlain seriously injured his knee. He missed almost the entire 82-game regular season, only appearing in 12 games. However, in these 12 games, he still managed to average 27.3 points, 18.4 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game. He was able to make a comeback just before the playoffs started, and played in all 18 Lakers playoff games. Again, the Lakers charged through the playoffs, and in the 1970 NBA Finals, the Lakers were pitted against the rugged New York Knicks, loaded with future Hall-of-Famers Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, and Walt Frazier. The teams fought a hard, gruelling series, but the Knicks took a 3-1 lead before center Reed injured his leg. With nobody to counter Chamberlain down low, the Lakers tied the series, and looked winners prior to Game 7. However, Reed famously hobbled up court, won the tip against Chamberlain, scored the first four points, and then solely concentrated on locking Chamberlain down, 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. A spirited Walt Frazier scored 36 points to upset the Lakers 110-99 and take the NBA championship. Frazier later stated that the 34-year old Chamberlain had lost some of his mobility, but without Reed's relentless defense, it would have been difficult to win.



In the 1970-71 NBA season, the Lakers made a notable move by signing sharpshooting guard Gail "Stumpy" Goodrich. Chamberlain averaged 20.7 points, 18.2 rebounds and 4.3 assists, once again led the NBA in rebounding and the Lakers won the Pacific Division title. However, after losing Elgin Baylor to a knee injury that effectively ended his career, the Lakers failed to reach the 1971 NBA Finals, getting easily defeated by the championship-bound Milwaukee Bucks with young future Hall-of-Fame pivot Lew Alcindor and veteran superstar guard Oscar Robertson with 1-4. After the 1971 playoffs, Chamberlain once had the offer to fight heavyweight boxing legend Muhammad Ali. The 15-round fight would have taken place on July 26, 1971 in the Houston Astrodome but Chamberlain finally refused the match. In an 1999 interview, Chamberlain stated that boxing trainer Cus D'Amato wanted to train him for the fight, and they offered Ali and him $5 million each to battle each other. However, after checking back with his father, Chamberlain finally said no.

In the 1971-72 NBA season, the Lakers hired former Celtics star guard Bill Sharman as head coach. Sharman wanted to introduce morning shoot-arounds and secondly transform the veteran Chamberlain into a defensive-minded, low-scoring post defender, thinking the Lakers had enough firepower with high-scoring guards West and Goodrich and forward Jim McMillian. Knowing that Chamberlain slept and woke up late, was fixated on good stats, and the all-time scoring champion, Sharman took out the sting by stating he wanted Chamberlain to play like his retired rival Bill Russell, who never put up great scoring stats, but always seemed to win. Chamberlain dedicated himself to playing tough defense, was content with being the fourth scoring option and only missed two morning shoot-arounds the entire season.

In that season, Chamberlain and the Lakers finally put it all together. In spite of the loss of Baylor, who retired eleven games into the season, Chamberlain, West and Goodrich led the Lakers through a record setting season. Shortly after Baylor's retirement, the Lakers would embark on a never approached 33 game win streak en-route to a then-record 69 wins in the regular season. Chamberlain once again led the league in rebounds and field goal percentage (.649). In the post-season, the Lakers defeated the Bulls in a sweep, then went on to face the Milwaukee Bucks in the next round. The series featured a matchup of two great centers as the Bucks were led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who won the season's MVP award and was a young phenom at the time. The Chamberlain-Jabbar matchup was hailed by LIFE magazine as the greatest matchup in all of sports. Chamberlain would help lead the Lakers past Jabbar and the Bucks in 6 games, and performed so well in the series that TIME magazine stated, "In the N.B.A.'s western division title series with Milwaukee, he (Chamberlain) decisively outplayed basketball's newest giant superstar, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, eleven years his junior." They then beat the New York Knicks in the 1972 NBA Finals thereby acquiring the first Lakers title since moving to Los Angeles by convincingly winning the series 4-1. This Lakers team included the forwards, scorer Jim McMillian and rebounding and defensive specialist Happy Hairston. In the series against the Knicks, Chamberlain averaged 19.2 PPG and was elected Finals MVP, mainly for his incredible rebounding. In the final game, he scored 23 points and had 29 rebounds, despite 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 1972-73 NBA season was to be Chamberlain’s last, although he did not know this at the time. In his last NBA year, he averaged 13.2 points and 18.6 points rebounds, still enough to win the rebounding crown for the 11th time in his career. In addition, he shot with an all-time NBA record .727 accuracy from the field, bettering his own mark of .683 from the 1966-67 season &mdash; neither percentage has been topped by any other player. It was the ninth time Chamberlain would lead the league in field goal percentage. Powered by his defensive presence, and carried by the offensive firepower of fellow veteran Jerry West and Gail Goodrich, the Lakers won 60 games in the regular season and reached the 1973 NBA Finals. The Lakers won Game 1 with 115-112, but the Knicks stormed back to win the next four games, powered by NBA Finals MVP Willis Reed and their newest addition, slick Hall-of-Fame shooting guard Earl "The Pearl" Monroe. Chamberlain did not yet know that this loss was the last professional game of his career.

San Diego Conquistadors


In 1973, the San Diego Conquistadors of the NBA rival league ABA signed Chamberlain as a player-coach. The offered him a $600,000 contract, and Chamberlain accepted. However, the Lakers filed legal action against their former star and successfully prevented him from actually playing, because he still owed them the option year of his contract. The judge allowed Chamberlain to coach his team, so he became one of basketball's best-paid coaches. In his single season as a coach, the Conquistadores went a mediocre 37-47 and lost against the Utah Stars in the Conference Semifinals. His Lakers ex-colleague Elgin Baylor had foreseen Chamberlain's failure, stating "he [Chamberlain] never had any discipline". After the season, Chamberlain retired from professional basketball. In an 1986 interview, he confessed he made his decision after weighing the potential joy of winning against the potential gloom of losing, and deciding the risk of yet another disappointment was too big.

Post-NBA career
After his stint with the Conquistadores, Chamberlain became bored with coaching jobs and dedicated himself into a wide field of activities and published several books, among them ''Who's Running the Asylum? Inside the Insane World of Sports Today'' (1997), in which he harshly criticised the NBA of the 1990s for being too disrespectful of players of the past. Chamberlain lived a bachelor’s life, and successfully went into business and entertainment, and was successful. He made money in stocks and real estate, opened a popular Harlem nightclub, Smalls Paradise, and also invested in broodmares. He built a mansion in Bel Air, called “Ursa Major” (The Big Dipper) after his nickname, which was thought to be worth a million dollars. Chamberlain also sponsored his personal professional volleyball teams, christening the women’s squad “The Little Dippers” and the men’s team “The Big Dippers”, and track and field clubs, respectively called “Wilt’s Wonder Women” and “Wilt’s A. C.”. Chamberlain also made money by appearing in ads for Drexel Burnham, Le Tigre and Foot Locker. Also, Chamberlain loved to live in luxury. He drove a Ferrari, a Bentley, and engaged James Bond car designer Peter Bohanna to design the Chamberlain Searcher I, a $400,000 custom sports car. “Ursa Major”, his million-dollar mansion in Bel-Air, had a 2,200-pound pivot as a front door, contained a Jacuzzi and sauna, and great displays of luxury. Chamberlain lived alone, relying on a great deal of automated gadgets, with only two cats named Zip and Zap as company. He was also a long-time neighbour of Groucho Marx, and worked out regularly all his life.

Even in the 1980s, Chamberlain flirted with making a comeback in the NBA. In the 1980-81 NBA season, coach Larry Brown recalled that the 45-year old Chamberlain had received an offer by the Cleveland Cavaliers. When Chamberlain was 50, the New Jersey Nets had the same idea, and Chamberlain declined again. Chamberlain however participated in several marathons instead.

Chamberlain was fit enough in his mid-forties to humble a young Los Angeles Lakers rookie called Magic Johnson in practice, and retained his chiselled physique into his sixties. He was still an imposing, crowd-pulling figure in his fifties; in 1984, he played a supporting role alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film Conan the Destroyer. In an 1986 interview, ESPN sports writer Frank Deford met Chamberlain shortly before his 50th birthday and recalled meeting a muscular, towering figure in excellent physical shape who liked to dress in tank tops and tight-fitting pants. He would stay an epitome of physical fitness for years to come, until his health rapidly worsened in 1999.

Legacy

 * He was basketball's unstoppable force, the most awesome offensive force the game has ever seen.
 * — introductory line of Chamberlain's nba.com profile

For his incredible statistical feats, the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain is universally regarded as one of the most extraordinary and dominant basketball players ever. With an assortment of fadeaway jump shots, his favourite one-hand bank-shot and powerful dunks in the low post, he scored 31,419 points, grabbed 23,924 rebounds, averaging 30.1 points (second best all time) and 22.9 rebounds (all-time leader) and was also very durable, standing on the hardwood an average 45.8 minutes. He holds forty-six official NBA all-time records, including 25 regular-season records, with most regarding scoring, rebounding, and playing time. Among those records are several which are regarded as virtually unbreakable, such as averaging 22.9 rebounds for a career or 50.4 points in a regular season, scoring 100 points or 55 rebounds in a single game, scoring 65 points or more fifteen times, 50 or more points 118 times, or never fouling out in 1,045 games. In Chamberlain's time, defensive statistics like blocks and steals had not been recorded yet. However, according to Jack Ramsay, "Harvey (Pollack) said he used to tell one of his statisticians to keep track of Wilt's blocks in big games . . . One night, they got up to 25" The official record for blocks, recorded after Chamberlain's retirement, is 17. In honour of Chamberlain's incredible feats, his jerseys have been retired five times, by respectively the University of Kansas, the Harlem Globetrotters, and the Warriors, 76ers and Lakers franchises.

Chamberlain-Russell rivalry
In historical NBA perspective, the rivalry between Chamberlain and his perennial nemesis Bill Russell is cited as the greatest on-court rivalry of all time. For a decade, people were fascinated by the matchup between the greatest offensive and defensive center of their generation, and their regular, highly dramatic clashes galvanised the NBA and made it attractive. It was somewhat lopsided, as Russell’s Celtics won 7-1 series against Chamberlain’s Warriors, Sixers and Lakers teams, and went 57-37 in the regular season and 29-20 in the playoffs against them. But to Chamberlain’s credit, it must be said that Russell was surrounded by a half-dozen Hall-of-Famers virtually all his career, while Chamberlain at best had two enshrined team mates in his teams. However, in their individual duels, he outscored Russell 30 to 14.2 per game and outrebounded him 28.2 to 22.9 in the regular season, and in the playoffs, he outscored him 25.7 to 14.9 and outrebounded him 28 to 24.7. The significance of this rivalry is documented by the 2005 book The Rivalry by sports journalist John Taylor.

It should be noted however that Russell and Chamberlain were best friends in private life. Russell never considered him his rival and disliked the term, instead pointing out that they rarely talked about basketball when they were alone. When Chamberlain died in 1999, Chamberlain’s nephew stated that Russell was the second person he was ordered to break the news to. In any case, the rivalry paved the way for future legendary on-court feuds like that between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, who were also fierce rivals on the hardwood, but best friends in private life.

Rule changes
Chamberlain's impact on the game is also reflected in the fact that he was directly responsible for several rule changes in the NBA, including widening the lane to try to keep him farther away from the hoop, institute offensive goaltending and revise rules governing inbounding the ball and shooting free throws. Before Chamberlain entered the league, players could pass the ball over the backboard or take a running start when attempting a foul shot. Chamberlain would use the backboard as a screen, cherry-picking passes and converting them into layups. Chamberlain was so athletic that he could convert foul shots via a slam dunk. In comparison, NBA Slam Dunk champions like Michael Jordan, Julius Erving or Brent Barry have dunked from the foul line, but they needed a full running start and / or had to step on the line. When Chamberlain's incredible dunks practically undermined the difficulty of a foul shot, the NBA banned his modus operandi.

For all these rule changes, coach Phil Jackson stated that Chamberlain redefined how to play in the paint and in the low post: "[Chamberlain] changed the interior part of the basketball game". In basketball history, pundits have stated that the only other player who forced such a massive change of rules is 6'10" Minneapolis Lakers center George "Mr. Basketball" Mikan, who played a decade before Chamberlain and also caused many rule changes designed to thwart so-called "big men".

Reputation
Although racking up some of the most impressive statistics in the history of Northern American professional sports, paradoxically, Chamberlain never managed to escape the stigma of being called a loser. The main reason was that he won "just" two NBA championships, but also had lost seven out of eight playoffs series against the Boston Celtics teams of his nemesis and best friend Bill Russell. A remarkable point was that Chamberlain regularly outscored and outrebounded his rival Russell, but Russell's Celtics regularly beat his teams, winning seven of the eight Russell-versus-Chamberlain series. For this reason, Chamberlain always was ridiculed and scapegoated. In addition Chamberlain was hurt by the fact that he did not always do his best to endear himself to the fans or his fellow players. In an April 1965 issue of Sports Illustrated Chamberlain conducted an interview entitled "My Life In A Bush League" where he criticized his fellow players, coaches, and NBA administrators. Chamberlain later commented that he could see in hindsight how the interview could have been instrumental in hurting his public image.

Regarding the criticism of him as a player, Chamberlain himself stated in his first autobiography, "I’m just not naturally competitive and aggressive. I don’t have a killer instinct". However, sports journalist Frank Deford of ESPN added that Chamberlain was caught in a lose-lose situation: "If you [Chamberlain] win, everybody says, 'Well, look at him, he's that big.' If you lose, everybody says, 'How could he lose, a guy that size?' " Colleague Larry Schwartz added that Chamberlain made scoring "look too easy"; if anything went wrong, Chamberlain was singled out as the culprit, and recalled he also was the player to boo on road games. Chamberlain himself often said: "Nobody roots for Goliath." Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli said “people came to see him [Chamberlain] lose”, and Los Angeles Lakers ex-coach Dick Harp added: “There were many opportunities for officials to call defensive fouls [on Chamberlain, but] most of the time, they did not.”

In addition, similar to later superstar Shaquille O'Neal, Chamberlain was target of jeer because of his bad free throw shooting. He connected on an abysmal .511 average, meaning he missed almost half. Countless suggestions were offered; he shot them underhanded, one-handed, two-handed, from the side of the circle, from well behind the line. Once, Sixers coach Alex Hannum suggested to Wilt that he shoot his famous fadeaway as a foul shot; but Chamberlain was just too scared to bring even more attention to his one great failing.

However, contemporary colleagues testified that they were often terrified to play against Chamberlain. Bill Russell regularly feared to get embarrassed by Chamberlain, Walt Frazier called his dominance on the court “comical”, and one of the most memorable memories of Chamberlain came from 6’10”, 270-pound Hall-of-Fame center Bob Lanier. Asked what about the most memorable moment of his career, Lanier answered: “When Wilt Chamberlain lifted me up and moved me like a coffee cup so he could get a favorable position.”

Awards and feats

 * Main article: Career achievements of Wilt Chamberlain 

Chamberlain is one of the most decorated NBA players of all time. He is a two-time NBA champion (1967, 1972) and a six-time NBA Finalist (1964, '67, '69, '70, '72, '73), was voted NBA regular season MVP four times *4x NBA regular season MVP (1959-60, 1965-66, 1966-67, 1967-68 seasons) and NBA Finals MVP once (1972), was elected into seven All-NBA First Teams (1960, '61, '62, '64, '66, '67, '68) and three All-NBA Second Teams ('63, '65, '72) and is with Wes Unseld one of two players to have won the Rookie of the Year and the NBA regular season MVP in the same year. In addition, he was voted NBA All-Star Game MVP 1960 and also made two All-Defensive First Teams (1972, '73). For his feats, Chamberlain was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame (1978), elected one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History (1996), ranked #2 in SLAM Magazine's Top 75 NBA Players of all time in 2003 and #13 in ESPN list of top athletes of the 20th century.

Statistically, Chamberlain holds forty-six official NBA all-time records, among them 25 regular-season records, among them the most regarding scoring, rebounding, and playing time; in Chamberlain's time, defensive statistics like blocks and steals had not been recorded yet. Among his 46 records are several which are regarded as virtually unbreakable, such as averaging 22.9 rebounds for a career or 50.4 points in a regular season, scoring 100 points or 55 rebounds in a single game, scoring 65 points or more fifteen times, 50 or more points 118 times, having 126 consecutive 20-plus point games, logging the all-time highest season field goal percentage (.727) or never fouling out in 1,045 games. An awe-struck Hall-of-Fame guard Walt Frazier just needed one word to sum up the significance of Chamberlain's records: "Comical".

The 100-point game

 * Main article: 100 point game 

On March 2, 1962, in a 169-147 Warriors victory over the New York Knicks at Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Chamberlain scored 100 points in a standard regulation game, 59 in the second half alone, mainly victimising Knicks reserve center Darrall Imhoff. He became the first, and as of 2007, only NBA player in history to score 100 points or more. 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. For the game, Chamberlain ended with 100 points, going 36-of-63 from the field and 28-of-32 from the free throw line. In those times, a three-point line was not introduced yet. Chamberlain also grabbed 25 rebounds. As a side note, two weeks later, the Warriors and the Knicks squared off again, this time in the Madison Square Garden. This time, Imhoff played all 48 minutes and got a standing ovation -- because he had held Chamberlain to "only" 54 points.

Personal life
Chamberlain was born as the son of Olivia and William Chamberlain. He was born into a big family where he was one of nine children. Chamberlain remembers having a comfortable, middle-class upbringing, unaffected by racial or religious issues. Therefore, he had little reservation to join Overbrook High School, a school with many Jewish students, and all his life strongly opposed bigotry of any kind. Chamberlain was one of the NBA's first six-digit-salary players and could afford a level of luxury few other athletes at that time could permit themselves, such as buying a penthouse in New York and living a bachelor's life. In his twenties, he would often stay out until late in the night and only wake up at noon. Referring to the one nickname he loved, Chamberlain called his mansion “Ursa Major” (The Big Dipper).

Despite being jeered and ridiculed all his basketball career, Chamberlain was known to be a humble, friendly and social character. He regularly mingled into the public, having no problems being recognised as Wilt Chamberlain and refraining from having great entourages, facts which impressed his team mate Jerry West, who later wrote the foreword to Chamberlain's biography Wilt: Larger Than Life by Robert Cherry (2004). Sixers’ ex-general manager Dr. Jack Ramsay confirmed these facts, recalling Chamberlain regularly took walks in downtown Philadelphia and acknowledged honking hoots with the air of a man enjoying all the attention. He also added that Chamberlain loved good food and fast cars, never was short of female company and often entertained people with stories from his life as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. As a side note, Chamberlain always wore rubber bands around his wrists, at first to hold up his socks, then just for effect. He stated: “I kept wearing them because it reminded me of who I was, where I came from", he says. "Then suddenly, about two years ago, I felt that I just didn't need that reminder anymore. So I took off the rubber bands." He stopped wearing them in the mid-eighties.

West also stated that Chamberlain was friendly, but tended to have strong opinions on everything, and tended to be a bit aloof because he thought he was the best in everything. In an interview with Scott Ostler of the Los Angeles Times, Chamberlain claimed to have dunked on an experimental 12-foot-high basket set up by Phog Allen at the University of Kansas. This assumption is debatable; in perspective, as of 2007, the recognised world record (Guinness Book of Records entry) is set by Michael Wilson of the Harlem Globetrotters, who needed an alley-oop to dunk into a 12-foot basket.

”20,000 women” claim
Regarding his love life, Chamberlain was never at loss for female company, a fact his long-time neighbour Groucho Marx often made fun about. Time and again, Marx would ask Chamberlain “Where are the girls? Where are the girls?” and then slink away. However, because he never was engaged or married, he sometimes had to challenge claims he was homosexual, an ironic fact given the reality. In 1991, Chamberlain wrote his second autobiography, A View from Above. There, the lifelong bachelor Chamberlain made his most notorious claim, namely stating he had sex with 20,000 women. Quickly, he became target for jokes and jibes, and fellow African-American superstar Arthur Ashe was highly critical, blasting Chamberlain for embarrassing black men and fueling prejudices about their sexual behaviour. Chamberlain defended himself “I was just doing what was natural -- chasing good-looking ladies, whoever they were and wherever they were available” and pointed out he never started a relationship with a married woman.

In an 1999 interview shortly before his death, Chamberlain explained: "I thought of a number [20,000] that was a round number that may be close and may be whatever, and I used that number […] The point of using the number was to show that sex was a great part of my life as basketball was a great part of my life. That's the reason why I was single." However, he regretted not explaining the sexual climate at the time of his escapades, and warned other men who admired him for it, closing with the words: "Having a thousand different ladies is pretty cool, I have learned in my life I've found out (sic) that having one woman a thousand different times is much more satisfying." Chamberlain also acknowledged he never came close to marrying, and never had intention of raising any children.

Death
During his entire life, Chamberlain was known for his great physical fitness. This is most remarkably featured in the 1961-62 NBA season, where he stood on the hardwood for an average 48.5 minutes, an all-time NBA record. However, in the nineties, he developed heart problems. In 1992, Chamberlain was hospitalised for three days following an irregular heartbeat, and in 1999, his situation deteriorated rapidly. After undergoing dental surgery in that year, he lost 50 pounds, was in great pain and seemed unable to recover from the stress. On October 12, 1999, Chamberlain died at age 63. His agent Sy Goldberg stated Chamberlain died of congestive heart failure, and for about a month, doctors had been draining his legs of fluid that had accumulated because of the heart problem.

In his sixties, Chamberlain was still a muscular, well-conditioned man, and therefore many had thought of him as the epitome of physical fitness. NBA players and officials mourned the loss of a player they universally remembered as a figurehead of the sport. His lifelong on-court nemesis and personal friend Bill Russell stated "the fierceness of our competition bonded us together for eternity", and Russell's coach Red Auerbach praised Chamberlain as vital for the success of the entire NBA. Ex-Lakers team mate Jerry West fondly remembered him as an utterly dominant, yet friendly and humorous player, and fellow Hall-of-Famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Johnny Kerr, Phil Jackson and Wes Unseld as well as later stars like Allen Iverson and Michael Jordan universally called Chamberlain one of the greatest players in the history of the sport.

Chamberlain in popular culture
70px|right|thumbnail|Wilt, the tall basketball player of the animated television series [[Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends]]

Libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick created the "Wilt Chamberlain example", that if fans agreed to pay to see him play, then Chamberlain was entitled to higher compensation because of his superior ability [on the court], in order to demonstrate that non-entitlement theories of justice were inherently unjust. Furthermore, in the media, Wilt, a tall, lanky, basketball fan and imaginary friend in the animated television series Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends is named after Chamberlain.