Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point Game - Prologue

Prologue

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. 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 7-foot-1-inch (2.16 m) and 260-pound (120 kg) center had missed only eight minutes and 33 seconds that season due to disqualification in a game from technical fouls. 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. 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. 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. 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. According to Hearn, Baylor said he wasn't concerned because "someday that guy is going to score 100". 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. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, "Chamberlain might have hit 100 if he had played the entire 32 minutes."

Before Chamberlain, the most dominant big man in the NBA was 6-foot-10-inch (2.08 m) George Mikan. 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. The Pistons attempted 13 shots in the game, and won 19–18. 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 NBA introduced the 24-second shot clock in 1954, and league scoring and attendance increased. By the 1961–62 season, teams were averaging 119 points each game. Chamberlain that season was one of 37 black players in the league, the NBA having started integration of blacks in 1950. With their emergence, the NBA game was stylistically being played faster and above the rim. 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. Critics suggested that basketball was becoming uninteresting with taller players dominating. Warriors teammate Joe Ruklick thought that "the attitude was, in my opinion, ' is a freak who will come and go. There will never be a black guy doing this again.'" Chamberlain, nicknamed Dipper, was revolutionizing the sport with his slam dunks, nicknamed the Dipper Dunk. Traditionalists considered dunking poor sportsmanship, and their occurrence was rare. As the league's second tallest player, Chamberlain began dunking more regularly. He was still more of a finesse player, preferring fadeaway shots and finger rolls. He rarely dunked forcefully. Teammate Paul Arizin believed Chamberlain did not want to be perceived as great merely from being tall.

There was little advance excitement about the pending Warriors-Knicks game that Friday. Only five games remained in the regular season, with the Warriors (46–29) in second place—eleven games behind the Boston Celtics—and the Knicks in last place. Chamberlain had spent the night before the game in New York, partying all night with a female companion before dropping her off at her home at 6:00 A.M. With no sleep and suffering from a hangover, he boarded the train to Philadelphia at 8 AM, met several friends at the Philadelphia train station, and had a long lunch with them, thus almost missing the team bus to Hershey. The other players were similarly bored. Warriors player York Larese said: "The biggest thrill in my life was to see that. There was nothing exciting about the Knicks playing the Warriors in Hershey. Chocolate was more exciting." The game was played at Hershey Sports Arena, an old drafty gym originally built for ice hockey. The league occasionally played games in remote towns to attract new fans. This was the Warriors' third "home" game of the season in Hershey, which was 85 miles (137 km) from Philadelphia. The Warriors' Tom Meschery called the arena "god-forsaken place ... The town of Hershey was built around a huge chocolate factory; everything there became permeated with the smell of chocolate. It was practically impossible to stay indoors; people felt sick. I was just dreaming to leave the place as fast as I could."

On a cold, rainy Friday night, only 4,124 spectators paid to see the game, more to see players from the Philadelphia Eagles, the local American football team, play an exhibition basketball game against their colleagues from the Baltimore Colts before the NBA game started. The arena's capacity was over 8,000, and Warriors owner Eddie Gottlieb was infamous for exaggerating attendance numbers. Warriors home attendance had dropped from 7,000 in Chamberlain's rookie season to less than 5,000 in this, his third, season. College basketball had started offering doubleheaders during the Great Depression to provide customers value for their money. Fans had grown accustomed to watching two games, so doubleheaders in the NBA became common.

The National Basketball Association was still struggling in its 16th season, not yet a major sports league and less established than college basketball. The league was hardly national with only one team west of St Louis. The NBA received low television ratings, and this game was not televised. The National Broadcast Company (NBC) considered not renewing the league's television contract. No members from the New York press were present as reporters were in Florida covering spring training for the New York Yankees and the expansion New York Mets. With few in the media present, the Warriors' publicist was tasked this night with being the stringer for the Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Only two photographers were at the game.

The Knicks were shorthanded with their starting center, Phil Jordon, out sick. Jordon's illness was officially reported as influenza but it was widely suspected he was simply hungover. Jordon in an early-season game had played Chamberlain even, scoring 33 points to the Warriors center's 34. The Knicks instead started 6-foot-10-inch (2.08 m), 220-pound (100 kg), second-year player Darrall Imhoff, a strong defensive player in college who led the California Golden Bears to the NCAA championship in 1959 and won a gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics. New York also had 6-foot-9-inch (2.06 m), 210-pound (95 kg), backup center Cleveland Buckner, a better shooter than a defender who Chamberlain overpowered for an NBA record 28 points in one quarter two days earlier.