On a chilly night in Hershey, Pennsylvania sixty years ago, Wilt Chamberlain played the greatest single-game of basketball ever. After scoring a then-record setting 78 points in a triple-overtime loss against the Los Angeles Lakers a mere three months prior, Wilt eclipsed that margin – with no overtime needed. One hundred points. Like most athletes and records set prior to modern round-the-clock media coverage, Wilt’s 100 point game is a sort of mythologized achievement. As we reach sixty years since “Wilt 100,” it’s time to reflect on how this feat occurred and speculate as to whether it can ever be repeated.
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Wilt the Stilt aka The Big Dipper aka Big Musty aka The Load
Wilt Chamberlain was an imposing figure on the basketball court with athleticism far ahead of his time. In the 1960s, centers were merely big-bodied, fairly unathletic players who were tasked with protecting the basket. Most were clumsy and ungainly, only on the court because of their impressive height. But Wilt Chamberlain wasn’t like those other 7-footers. One historian described Wilt as being “big as an oak tree and graceful as a ballet dancer.” He moved up and down the floor at the speed of a gazelle, showing off his impressive leaping ability as he slammed putback dunks or swatted opposing shots into the stands. For all this unprecedented physical ability, however, Wilt did have one thing in common with those other big men. The only thing ‘The Big Dipper’ couldn’t really do all that well on a basketball court was shoot free throws.
Highlights in Hershey
On March 2nd, 1962, Wilt’s Philadelphia Warriors were playing the New York Knicks at the Hershey Sports Arena on a court initially built for rollerskating. At the time, the Philadelphia Warriors played a few home games in Hershey as an attempt to attract additional fans. A little over 4,000 people were in attendance, a far cry from the tens of thousands filling arenas on a nightly basis today.
It took a perfect storm of events – and a bit of conspiring – to make Wilt’s record-setting night a reality. Foremost, the Knicks were without their starting center Phil Jordan. The official report is that he had the flu, though many rumors and teammate anecdotes speculate that he was actually very hungover. Knicks backup center Darrall Imhoff was tasked with guarding Wilt, though it didn’t last long.
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Wilt scored a light 23 points in the first quarter, followed by 18 in the second. Then, a mere twenty minutes into the game, Imhoff fouled out. That left Cleveland Buckner, a 6’9” rookie from Jackson State, to lock down one of the most dominant players in NBA history amidst his greatest season ever. As you already know, it did not end well for Buckner.
In the third quarter, Wilt went off for 28 points, bringing his total to 69. At this point, fans knew they were in the presence of something truly special. They began to chant “Give it to Wilt! Give it to Wilt!” every time Philadelphia had the ball. His Warriors teammates obliged, passing up open shots in order to force-feed Wilt the ball inside. Warriors head coach Frank McGuire even put in his backups just to foul the Knicks, stop the clock, and get the ball back on offense.
With 46 seconds left in the fourth quarter, Wilt the Stilt scored his 99th and 100th points of the game. Fans stormed the court as Wilt rushed to the locker room where PR man Harvey Pollack scribbled “100” on a piece of paper to create the now-famous photo. The Warriors beat the Knicks, 169-147. In total, Wilt shot 36-for-63 from the field, and 28-for-32 at the free-throw line.
A Brief Note on Free Throw Etiquette
If the latter statistic doesn’t stand out to you, it should. How does a career 51.1% free throw shooter just so happen to make 87.5% of his free throws one fateful night in Hershey, Pennsylvania? Well, Wilt actually shot fairly well from the line for most of the 1962 season. He finished the season shooting at a 61.3% clip – the only time in his career he eclipsed the sixty percent mark. After struggling immensely from the line in his first two seasons, Wilt decided to switch things up in year three. For the majority of the 1961-62 season, including the game in which he scored 100 points, Wilt Chamberlain shot his free throws underhanded.
An underhand shot entails holding the ball between your knees and flicking it towards the basket from a slight crouch. From a physics standpoint, this is a far superior way to shoot. With fewer physical movements to remember, there are fewer things that can go wrong. Moreover, your arms hang straight down, thus inhibiting additional muscle tension. Underhand, or “granny shots,” also have a much softer touch, meaning there is a lesser margin of error as slight misses end up bouncing in. However, from a social perspective, underhand shots are, for some unknown reason, associated with weakness. It is for that exact reason that after putting together what is arguably the best statistical season in basketball history, Wilt Chamberlain chooses to go back to the standard shooting motion.
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In an episode of his podcast Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell sits down with NBA Hall of Famer and underhand savant Rick Barry to discuss Wilt’s decision to abandon the underhanded free throw. It’s a highly compelling analysis of social thresholds that tackles the underhanded free throw conundrum. In his autobiography, Wilt admits he made a mistake, saying
“I felt silly, like a sissy, shooting underhanded. I know I was wrong, I know some of the best foul shooters in history shot that way – I just couldn’t do it.”
Wilt’s miraculous 100 point game – and really his entire 1962 season – doesn’t happen without his performance from the free-throw line. Wilt ended up averaging an absurd 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds per game while playing 48.5 minutes nightly. What’s even crazier is that Wilt didn’t even win MVP that year. But as great as he was, Wilt Chamberlain was not the greatest basketball player he could have been.
Contextualizing the Competition
In the sixty years since his record-setting performance, only five players have broken the 70 point marker, including Wilt himself on three separate occasions. The closest anyone has come to scoring 100 came during Kobe Bryant’s 81 point game against the Raptors in 2006. Even with advanced analytics favoring three-point shots, it would take a full-fledged team effort to break the individual record. At a certain point, however, the other team would simply double or triple-team the hot hand. In Kobe’s final game of his career, the Lakers let him shoot nearly every single possession against a lackluster Jazz defense and he still barely reached 60 points. This isn’t a knock on the Mamba by any means, but it goes to show you just how insane Wilt’s record is.
It’s difficult to imagine anyone coming close to breaking the record in the modern NBA. Wilt was taking nearly 40 shots per game at his peak, a figure that rose to 63 in his 100 point game. Could you imagine the berating a player would face on Twitter if they tried to loft up over sixty attempts in this day and age? They’d likely be labeled as one of the most selfish players in the league. Just look at the “ball hog” label that followed players like Kobe and Carmelo Anthony throughout their entire careers – and they weren’t taking nearly as many shots as Wilt.
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We live in a society where “stat-padding” is condemned with the utmost disdain. The best scorers of today – LeBron James, Luka Doncic, Devin Booker – only take about 20 shots on average. Moreover, if the great Kobe Bryant only takes 50 shots in his farewell game, nobody is going to surpass that in just any random game on the schedule. Even Wilt later admitted, “I really think I shot too often in that 100-point game – particularly in the fourth quarter when everyone was egging me on toward 100.”
Part of the reason why Wilt’s record happened was that nearly everyone involved wanted to see if it could be done. There was no other player as strong or athletic as Wilt Chamberlain in the NBA. Who better to chase an unthinkable scoring record? With a lackluster group of centers guarding him, Wilt’s teammates, coaches, and the fans packing the Hershey Sports Arena wanted to see just how far his greatness could stretch. One hundred points in a single game. What Wilt Chamberlain accomplished on March 2nd, 1962 is more than deserving of eternal immortalization. However, context is key. While there are a few bits that detract from the overall mythology around the record, numbers don’t lie. When you reach the promised land, nobody remembers what it took to get there – they only remember the final score.
We hope you enjoyed this retrospective on the 60th Anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point game. Lastly, for more sports editorials, Barry Bonds Unjustly Denied Entry to the MLB Hall of Fame.
