Personal Life of Wilt Chamberlain - Friendships and Rivalries

Friendships and Rivalries

Although Cherry points out that Chamberlain was an egotist, he added that he had good relationships with many contemporaries and enjoyed a great deal of respect. He was especially lauded for his good rapport with his fans, often providing tickets and signing autographs. Dr. Jack Ramsay recalled that Chamberlain regularly took walks in downtown Philadelphia and acknowledged honking horns with the air of a man enjoying all the attention. Jerry West called him a "complex... very nice person", and NBA rival Jack McMahon even said: "The best thing that happened to the NBA is that God made Wilt a nice person... he could have killed us all with his left hand." Celtics contemporary Bob Cousy even assumed that if Chamberlain had been less fixated on being popular, he would have been meaner and able to win more titles.

During most of his NBA career, Chamberlain was good friends with Bill Russell. Chamberlain often invited Russell over to Thanksgiving, and at Russell's place, conversation mostly concerned Russell's electric trains. But as the championship count became increasingly lopsided, the relationship got strained, and turned hostile after Russell accused Chamberlain of "copping out" in the notorious Game 7 of the 1969 NBA Finals. The two men did not talk to each other for over 20 years, until Russell apologized privately, then publicly in a 1997 joint interview with Bob Costas: "There was a thing almost 30 years ago... I was wrong." Still, Chamberlain maintained a level of bitterness, regretted that he should have been "more physical" with Russell in their games and privately continued accusing his rival for "intellectualizing" basketball in a negative way.

More hostile was Chamberlain's relationship to fellow Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, ten years his junior. Although Abdul-Jabbar idolized him as a teenager and was once part of his inner circle, the student/mentor bond deteriorated into intense mutual loathing, especially after Chamberlain retired. Chamberlain often criticized Abdul-Jabbar for a perceived lack of scoring, rebounding and defense, although Cherry points out that Abdul-Jabbar is virtually peerless regarding scoring, rebounding and call-ups to the NBA All-Defensive Teams. As an admirer of Malcolm X and a supporter of black nationalist movements and the Nation of Islam, Abdul-Jabbar accused Chamberlain of being a traitor to the black race for his Republican political leanings, support of Richard Nixon, and relationships with white women. When Jabbar broke Chamberlain's all-time scoring record in 1984, matters had improved, but after that, Chamberlain repeatedly called on him to retire and accused him of not playing up to the level of his physical abilities. When Abdul-Jabbar published his autobiography in 1990, he retaliated by writing a paper titled "To Wilt Chumperlane " in which he stated "Now that I am done playing, history will remember me as someone who helped teammates to win, while you will be remembered as a crybaby, a loser, and a quitter." and the relationship remained strained until the end. However, in an interview in 1993, Chamberlain told Bob Costas that if he were to see Abdul-Jabbar today he "wouldn't feel any real animosity towards him," because he felt that Abdul-Jabbar was simply "venting a little anger, and saying something he really doesn't mean."