More Wilt gems from the vault
YESTERDAY, WE featured a bunch of quotes and notes related to the great Wilt Chamberlain. Today, on the 50th anniversary of his 100-point game, we offer Part 2.
For a complete retrospective on Wilt's 100-point game, click here.
For Part 1 of this series, click here.
YESTERDAY, WE featured a bunch of quotes and notes related to the great Wilt Chamberlain. Today, on the 50th anniversary of his 100-point game, we offer Part 2.
* Wilt was ticketed by 5-7 Kansas City patrolman Freddie Hicks for doing 42 in a 30-mph zone after his freshman year. Wilt had a sales job for the McDowell Tire Co. in Kansas that summer.
* "In basketball," Chamberlain said after finally winning the NBA title, "you can score 100 points one night and you can't sit back and enjoy it because you've got another game. But this, I'm gonna enjoy all summer long."
* Food poisoning kept Chamberlain out of a game at Boston in 1966 and the Sixers didn't think it was an accident. Coach Dolph Schayes warned the manager of the Boston-Sheraton that "if it happens again we will pull out of this hotel, and there is a possibility we will pull out of all Sheraton Hotels all over the league." Boston-area bookies reportedly took the game off the board when Celtics money kept rolling in during the afternoon.
* Wilt, on why he was such a generous tipper: "You gotta help each other in the world. Balancing the economy, I think they call it."
* Wilt, on critics calling his play selfish: "Nobody can be more sick and tired of it than I am. It's like somebody telling Roger Maris if he hits homers for the Yankees, it doesn't help them. But if he doesn't hit homers, he's a bum."
* He once got into a fight with a player named Jordon in 1961. That player (Phil Jordon) has a name eerily similar to the other player besides Wilt who some people assert is the greatest of all time.
* "I just hope nobody ever asks me when I'm going to score 120," he once said, "because I never will."
* Ten years to the day after Wilt made his college debut with 52 points against Northwestern, Lew Alcindor scored 56 for UCLA in a game against USC on Dec. 3, 1966. Alcindor would change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and eventually break Chamberlain's NBA career points record.