Critics suggested that basketball was becoming uninteresting with taller players dominating. Many of the league's great players were black, and blacks believed they were limited by a league quota of four black players per team. With their emergence, the NBA game was stylistically being played faster and above the rim. Chamberlain that season was one of 37 black players in the league, the NBA having started integration of blacks in 1950. By the 1961–62 season, teams were averaging 119 points each game. The NBA introduced the 24-second shot clock in 1954, and league scoring and attendance increased. NBA President Maurice Podoloff said, "In our game, with the number of stars we have, we of necessity run up big scores." In the 1950–51 season, teams averaged just above 80 points per game. The Pistons attempted 13 shots in the game, and won 19–18. In November 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons held the ball for minutes at a time without shooting to limit the impact of the Minneapolis Lakers' Mikan. 99), shown here in college, dominated the NBA before Chamberlain.īefore Chamberlain, the most dominant big man in the NBA was 6-foot-10-inch (2.08 m) George Mikan. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, "Chamberlain might have hit 100 if he had played the entire 32 minutes." Rival center Bill Russell predicted, " has the size, strength, and stamina to score one hundred some night." In a high school game in 1955, Chamberlain had scored 90 points in a 123–21 victory. According to Hearn, Baylor said he wasn't concerned because "someday that guy is going to score 100". Legendary Laker broadcaster Chick Hearn often told the story that after the game, he asked Baylor if it bothered him that Chamberlain had an extra 15 minutes to break the record. On December 8, 1961, in a triple overtime game versus the Los Angeles Lakers, he set a new NBA record by scoring 78 points, breaking the record of 71 previously set by Elgin Baylor.
He was closing in on 4,000 points for the season, needing 237 more no other player had ever scored 3,000 points at that point.
In three earlier games that week, Chamberlain had scored 67, 65, and 61 points respectively, giving him an already-record 15 times scoring 60 or more points in his career.
WILT CHAMBERLAIN UNDERHAND THROW PROFESSIONAL
Frank McGuire, the Warriors' new coach, started the season vowing to get the ball to Chamberlain "two-thirds of the time." Sports Illustrated wrote that McGuire's "eventual effect may be to measurably change the character of professional basketball from the brawling, hustling, cigar-in-the-face and eye-on-the-till game it has been for decades to the major league sport which it longs and deserves to be." He was determined to play Chamberlain every minute of every game the center had missed only eight minutes and 33 seconds that season due to disqualification in a game from technical fouls. The attendance at the game was approximately half of capacity, and no members of the New York press were at the game.Ī 7-foot-1-inch (2.16 m) and 260-pound (120 kg) center, Chamberlain was in his third season in the NBA, having set season scoring records in each of his first two seasons with 37.6 and then 38.4 points per game. The NBA was not yet recognized as being a major sports league and struggled to compete against college basketball. The game was not televised, and no video footage of the game has since been recovered there are only audio recordings of the game's fourth quarter. The Warriors countered by committing fouls of their own to get the ball back. During the fourth quarter, the Knicks began fouling other players to keep the ball away from Chamberlain, and they also became deliberate on offense to reduce the number of possessions for Philadelphia. The third-year center had already set season scoring records in his first two seasons. That season, Chamberlain averaged a single-season record 50.4 points per game, and he broke the NBA single-game scoring record (71) earlier in the season in December with 78 points. Both teams broke the record for most combined points in a game (316).
WILT CHAMBERLAIN UNDERHAND THROW FREE
Chamberlain set five other league records that game including most free throws made, a notable achievement, as he was regarded as a poor free throw shooter. It is widely considered one of the greatest records in the sport's history. Wilt Chamberlain set the single-game scoring record in the National Basketball Association (NBA) by scoring 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors in a 169–147 win over the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962, at Hershey Sports Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Hershey Sports Arena, Hershey, Pennsylvania
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