OF WILT, JIM BROWN AND TALKING ABOUT GOATS
By STEVE KING
Tuesday was a big day in sports history.
It was the 59th anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain’s most memorable game.
It was on March 2, 1962 that “The Big Dipper,” or “Wilt the Stilt,” as he was also known, then playing for the Philadelphia Warriors before the franchise’s move to San Francisco, scored what is still an NBA-record 100 points in a 169-147 win over the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pa. He had 59 points in the second half alone and made 28 free throws, also still a league mark.
The 7-foot-1, 275-pound center averaged 44.8 points per game that season after averaging — get this — 50.4 the previous year. In the two seasons before that — his first years in the NBA –, he averaged 37.6 and 38.4 points. From 1963-65, he averaged 36.8, 34.7 and 33.5. Plus he averaged 22.9 rebounds a game for his 14-year career.
A friend of mine who is a longtime high school basketball coach, and a real junkie about the sport, has a piece of the floor from the Hersheypark Arena at which the game was played. He got it from a friend who works for the Philadelphia 76ers. Talk about a cool memento!
Anyway, why all the talk about Chamberlain?
Because we’re all caught up these days in GOAT — greatest of all-time — discussion in every sport, everything, really, even non-sports.
As basketball fans and the so-called experts go back and forth between Lebron James and Michael Jordan for the greatest-ever tag, everybody forgets about Chamberlin, probably because he played so long ago. With numbers like I mentioned earlier, shouldn’t he be in the conversation, too?
In evaluating players from different eras, it’s not, “Could Wilt Chamberlain play today?” That’s silly, goofy. Rather, in looking at greatness, ask this simple question, “Was Wilt more dominant against his own competition than, say, James or Jordan were against theirs?”
Chamberlain was born in 1936, about six months after Browns Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown. Just as Chamberlain was light years ahead of everybody he played against, producing video-game-like statistics, so was Brown in the same. era That’s why I — and many others — call Brown the greatest football player ever. It has nothing to do with trying to determine if Brown could play today. Are you kidding? He’s 85 years old.
