All of what you are about to read is true, or at the very least was written about in books by credible men who claim it’s all true. There exists no footage of the event. Still, I hope you’ll find it worth your while. 

It was an unextraordinary Friday in March of 1962. Wilt Chamberlain’s Philadelphia Warriors had, as a promotional event for the team, scheduled a home game against the woebegone New York Knicks to be played at the Hershey Sports Arena, a 2.5 hour bus ride from their typical location in Convention Hall. Only five games remained in the regular season, but with the Knicks already eliminated and the Warriors having secured the #3 seed for the impending playoffs, the stakes for this contest could not have been lower. The NBA was not yet particularly popular. The primary driver of attendance in this case was an exhibition basketball contest between the Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Colts, two teams from the National Football League, and even still the arena was below half-capacity. Of the 4,000 present, just two were photographers, and the game was not even televised. 

Furthering our adventures in the cosmic insignificance of this game at the time, the New York Knicks starting center Phil Jordon was unable to attend the game due to a vicious hangover. This blunder rendered poor Darrall Imhoff, a second year player averaging a mesmerizing 5 points per game on 35% accuracy, the only remaining Knick taller than 6’ 9” and thus their only option to feed to the monstrous 7’ 1”, 275 pound Wilt Chamberlain. Imhoff would go on to collect six personal fouls and was disqualified in the first half.  

Hardly a competition, the events of that March 2nd evening could perhaps most accurately be described as a merciless, farcical humiliation of a dejected band of semi-professional athletes orchestrated by an unfeeling demigod seeking to ameliorate his own boredom. Wilt had 41 of the team’s 73 points at halftime, and the Warriors led comfortably, but the mockery only truly began when teammate Guy Rodgers, who would go on to deliver on his promises with 20 assists, suggested in the locker room that they abandon all pretenses of an organized team offense and find out just how many points ‘The Big Dipper’ could score if they force-fed him the basketball on every play.

 Accommodating the insistence of his teammates, Chamberlain tacked on 28 additional points in the 3rd quarter, at which point the spectacle of his dominance consumed any notion of customary basketball procedure. With the game’s result obviously beyond question, the PA announcer began reiterating Wilt’s point total every fifteen seconds or so, as several hundred rabid spectators screamed for him to chase 100. 

The Knicks players, not to be made unpaid clowns in Chamberlain’s circus, themselves dropped the charade of organized basketball and dedicated all five positions to the task of stymieing him. An unadulterated farce, the game devolved comprehensively into Wilt’s teammates neglecting wide open layups to lob him the ball over a swarm of orange and blue dwarves, whereupon the notoriously pitiful free throw shooter would be violently hacked and sent to the line to shoot two. The strategy backfired, as Wilt, shooting underhanded, made 28 of his 32 free throw attempts, setting a still unbroken NBA record. 

He reached 88 points with six minutes left, and the Knicks’ blatant disregard for maintaining any appearance of competitive integrity somehow worsened. Their five players on the floor, who, remember, all made it to the NBA, who were each likely the greatest athletes their respective middle schools and high schools had ever seen, and who, in fact, would go on to make a collective fifteen all-star game appearances, stopped playing basketball entirely. With over an eighth remaining in what was supposed to be a professional basketball game, the losing team sat on the ball, deliberately draining the full 24 seconds in lieu of any inclination to score. All that mattered was keeping Wilt from scoring 100 points. They accepted the shot clock violation, handed the ball back to the Warriors, and then immediately fouled one of Wilt’s teammates, who would shoot two free throws, then rinse and repeat. Embarrassing, to be sure, but the plan itself was relatively foolproof.  

Time was running out with Mr. Chamberlain still several points shy of the century mark, prompting his teammates to match the shamelessness of their opposition. They proceeded to miss free throws on purpose, so as to afford Wilt the opportunity to score off the rebound, and, despite the insurmountable margin on the scoreboard in their favor, the Warriors started intentionally fouling the Knicks players as soon as they touched the ball, preventing them from draining any clock. 

Thus, the teams spent nearly an entire fourth quarter of basketball in the world’s most prestigious league fouling each other on purpose without the slightest regard for winning the actual game. Combined, they committed 57 personal fouls. Wilt arrived at 98 points with under a minute left, and the Warriors again managed to pass him the basketball, whereupon he attempted to shoot over quintuple coverage and missed badly. Since all five Knicks were guarding him, they had nobody left to secure the rebound, so one of Wilt’s teammates retrieved the ball underneath the basket and launched it right back to him. He missed again. One more time, his teammate recovered the ball, again ignoring the wide open basket, and catapulted it back to him, where, again, he tried his luck over quintuple coverage, and finally made the shot. 

The 46 seconds which remained in the game would have to wait, as “over 200 spectators stormed the floor, wanting to touch the hero of the night.” Play was suspended for over nine minutes. The Knicks simply stood there, humiliated, pleading for the referees to take control of the situation so that they could finish the game and go home. 

So, let’s review. The game was played in some third rate arena, a neutral site best known for its neighboring chocolate factories, in which “the rims were aged, flimsy, and forgiving.” None of the active referees had ever previously managed an NBA game. The contest itself was meaningless, bearing zero implications on the teams’ ultimate playoff standing. The opponent was not only the worst team in the league, but they were the worst team in the league that was also missing their only NBA-caliber center due to a hangover. 

Wilt’s coach, his teammates, the fans, and even the PA announcer all eschewed any appearance of neutrality or professionalism in order to exclusively cheer on his pursuit of 100 points. They ignored wide open layups to pass him the ball in quintuple coverage. They missed shots on purpose. They committed rampant intentional fouls while leading by 30 in order to preserve the clock so Wilt could keep scoring. 

Wilt played all 48 minutes. He attempted 63 shots, the most in NBA history. No one since Wilt has exceeded even 50 shot attempts. His 36 made baskets were more than Lebron James has ever so much as attempted in a single game, and his 27 misses were more than any NBA player has missed in a game since the first term of the George W. Bush administration (with the exception of Kobe’s farewell game). His True Shooting Percentage for the game was 64%, lower than the 2023-2024 season scoring efficiency average of Isaiah Hartenstein, Domantas Sabonis, Obi Toppin, Nicolas Batum, Nikola Jokic, or any of another three dozen players. 

Do any of these details actually matter? Is that really my point, that Wilt’s game was overrated and should be regarded as such? 

Not. At. All 

The game is legendary. Arguably the most legendary individual performance in all of sports. And god dammit it should be! He scored 100 points! He put forth a show so singularly enthralling that the fans in an arena four hours from Philadelphia flooded the court while the game was still in progress to bow down before him. 

The problem is us. Or in this case, me. We, as a collective, bludgeoned into submission by an increasingly venomous discourse, watch modern athletes with scornful eyes often embittered by nostalgia, hostile to the notion of improvement over time because we are terrified of change, hell-bent on undermining their accomplishments to preserve our heroes.  

Imagine, for just a moment, what the reaction would be if this exact game took place in 2024. Let’s say Joel Embiid and the 76ers decided to play the Detroit Pistons on the last day of the season in a decrepit high school gym in Topeka, Kansas, half of the Pistons team opted not to play leaving Killian Hayes to guard Embiid, the Sixers won by 52 points, and Embiid played all 48 minutes so that he could shoot the ball 79 times and score 101 points. The game would be sullied with enough asterisks to span the gap between Neptune and the Sun. Stephen A. Smith would pronounce it a disgrace to the game of basketball the next morning. Shaq and Kenny would say it represents everything wrong with the modern NBA. Twitter would label Embiid the Mickiest Mouse that’s ever clubhoused. 

How can I be so sure? Rewind two weeks. Joel Embiid scored 70 points in 37 minutes in a win while being guarded by a 7 ‘4 mutant who happens to be the greatest defensive prospect to enter the NBA since Hakeem Olajuwon. On the same night, Karl Anthony-Towns scored 44 points in the first half while going 8/8 from beyond the arc. A few nights later, Luka Doncic scored 73 points converting 25 of his 33 shot attempts, good for 91% True Shooting, while across the country Devin Booker scored 62 points on the road against one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference. 

The response to these extraordinary performances was, almost universally, “nobody plays defense anymore.” Several of the most prominent talking heads, the people who are paid to promote the NBA, went as far as to say “the league is broken.” Embiid’s game doesn’t count because he is a tryhard in the regular season and the Spurs are bad. Luka’s game doesn’t count because the Hawks have the 4th worst defense in the league. Booker and Towns obviously get no credit because their teams lost. But, as we saw with Wilt’s masterpiece, when you go looking for blemishes, you’ll always find them. 

If you want to look yourself in the mirror and nod firmly at the notion that the 450 best basketball players in the world are struggling to limit scoring output because “they aren’t trying,” then by all means go ahead, but consider for a moment the task at hand. 

Joel Embiid is 7 feet tall and weighs 300 pounds, but that’s where the Wilt similarities end. Embiid also dribbles like a point guard, shoots 38% from three, makes 85% of his free throws, and is surrounded at all times by four lights-out shooters who can take two dribbles and dunk if you give them even a slim lane to the basket. Luka Doncic is a 6’ 7” point guard with the best touch of any guard in NBA history who just so happens to be one of the five best passers the sport has ever seen. 

Nobody in the world can guard either of these players one on one, and let’s not pretend Horace Grant or Joe Dumars could have either. If you send a double team, they pass over the top of it for wide open threes and layups. They are unprecedented talents with zero offensive weaknesses, and are accordingly putting up unprecedented production. Michael Jordan was a mediocre passer and couldn’t shoot threes. Shaq couldn’t shoot free throws. It used to be the case that at all times, teams would have a Power Forward and a Center on the floor who were both incapable of dribbling the basketball or making jump shots. Now, having even one player on the floor who can’t score at all three levels is considered a liability. The task of defense is infinitely harder because the offensive talent has grown overwhelming across all five positions. I promise you that the players are trying. 

I’m getting sidetracked. The conversation about defense surely warrants its own article. What I ultimately want to spotlight is the tendency of even the game’s most renowned commentators, acting on a comparison muscle locked in permanent spasm, to greet historically unparalleled outbursts of shotmaking with at best smug cynicism or outright dismissal. Since of course nothing can exceed the sport’s apex, the 1990s, any statistical improvements can be safely chalked up to deterioration in effort compounded by stylistic impurity and rules changes. Nevermind the influx of international talent or the seismic, incontestable leap in raw athleticism and aptitude. Rest assured that the league’s pundits and figureheads will devote every last molecule of public breath to tearing down the league’s stars and insisting that the product they are supposed to be getting you to watch is comprehensively inferior to what it was three decades ago. 

Allow me to venture the possibility that perhaps the sport of basketball is not immune to advancement and evolution. My entreaty here is that when we watch today’s players do spectacular things, we ought to remember to enjoy them. Let us rekindle the spirit of the psychotic, awe-stricken fan in 1962 who paraded onto the court like the US had just won its freedom from Britain. Encourage players to chase legends. Quiet our inner curmudgeon, lest its incessancy annihilate the wonder of the experience completely, and make room for ascending titans in the pantheon of NBA gods. 

Thanks for reading 😀

1. Wilt, 1962 – Gary M. Pomerantz