50 Fun Facts About Wilt Chamberlain

Which team did Wilt Chamberlain score his record 100 points against?

New York Knicks. Desperate not to be on the wrong end of history, they fouled every other opponent to keep the ball from him, and his teammates fouled back to get it.

In which Pennsylvania town did Wilt Chamberlain play his 100-point game in 1962?

Hershey. Only 4,124 people were in the chocolate town's arena, and because the game was not televised, an audio recording of the fourth quarter is all that survives.

Which of his nicknames did Wilt Chamberlain like best?

The Big Dipper. Friends coined it after watching him dip his head to get through doorways, and he detested the names that drew attention to his height.

Wilt Chamberlain often summed up his public image with the line "Nobody roots for" whom?

Goliath. He meant that a giant gets no sympathy: if he won, people said it was only his size, and if he lost, they asked how a man that big could fail.

Which Philadelphia high school did Wilt Chamberlain star for?

Overbrook. His teams lost only three games in three seasons, and by the time he left, more than a hundred colleges were trying to recruit him.

Which Kansas coach recruited Wilt Chamberlain, then had to retire before ever coaching him in a game?

Phog Allen. He reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 before Chamberlain was eligible, and the player got on poorly with his successor, Dick Harp.

Which team beat Wilt Chamberlain's Kansas in triple overtime in the 1957 NCAA final?

North Carolina. The unbeaten winners had needed three overtimes to win their semi-final as well, so the title cost them six extra periods.

Despite losing the 1957 NCAA final, which honour did Wilt Chamberlain receive?

Most Outstanding Player. He was voted the tournament's best even though the winners packed a sagging zone around him and kept three defenders on him all night.

Which coach sent his shortest player to jump against Wilt Chamberlain at the tip-off of the 1957 NCAA final?

Frank McGuire. The ploy was meant to unsettle the 7-footer, and five years later McGuire was on his side, coaching him through the season of the 100-point game.

Wilt Chamberlain's 1973 autobiography called him "just like any other 7-foot black millionaire who lives" where?

Next door. The book came out during his single season as a coach, a job that bored him so much he once skipped a game to sign copies.

Which team did Wilt Chamberlain play for in 1958-59, while he was still barred from the NBA?

Harlem Globetrotters. An NBA rule kept him out until his college class had graduated, so he spent the year touring for a reported $50,000, an astronomical sum at the time.

Wilt Chamberlain's record average of 48.5 a game in 1961-62 came in which statistic?

Minutes played. A regulation game lasts only 48 minutes, but he sat out just eight all season and played every overtime, which pushed his average past the length of a game.

Wilt Chamberlain led the NBA in scoring in each of his first seven seasons, a streak matched only by which later star?

Michael Jordan. His seven straight titles came two decades later, and Chamberlain said his own run ended only because coaches asked him to shoot less.

Wilt Chamberlain's Warriors left Philadelphia in 1962 for which city?

San Francisco. Owner Eddie Gottlieb sold the franchise to a group of Bay Area businessmen, and the team moved to California with its record-breaking center.

Wilt Chamberlain was named NBA Most Valuable Player in 1960 while also winning which award?

Rookie of the Year. His arrival lifted the Warriors from last place in their division to second, and by 2025 only Wes Unseld, in 1969, had matched the double.

What is Wilt Chamberlain holding up in the famous photograph from his record game in 1962?

A paper sign. In the locker room afterwards the Warriors' publicist scrawled "100" on a sheet of paper and had him hold it up for a photograph.

Which Celtics forward did Chamberlain punch, injuring his own hand, in the 1960 playoffs?

Red Auerbach had ordered Heinsohn to foul and shove Chamberlain to slow him getting back on defence.

After one NBA season, Wilt Chamberlain considered doing what?

Retire. He was sick of the hard fouls that teams used to stop him, and feared that one day he would lose his temper and hit back.

In 1,045 NBA games, Wilt Chamberlain never once did what?

Foul out. It was his proudest feat: a center who battled under the basket all night, he averaged only two fouls a game across his whole career.

Wilt Chamberlain set an NBA single-game record of 55 in which statistic?

Rebounds. He set the mark at home against the defending champions and their own great defensive center, and still finished on the losing side, 132-129.

In the season of his 100-point game, how was Wilt Chamberlain shooting his free throws?

Underhanded. The method brought him 28 of 32 on the night he scored 100, yet he later gave it up, saying he felt too embarrassed to keep shooting that way.

Which Celtics center was Wilt Chamberlain's great rival?

Bill Russell. They met in eight playoff series in a decade and Chamberlain's team won only one, even though he outscored Russell by 81 points in the first of them.

With which team did Wilt Chamberlain win his first NBA title, in 1967?

Philadelphia 76ers. They went 68-13, at the time the best record in league history, and ended the Boston Celtics' run of eight straight championships.

Wilt Chamberlain was traded days after which event?

All-Star Game. He scored 20 points in it in January 1965, and within 48 hours the struggling Warriors had swapped the league's biggest star for three players and $150,000.

In 1967-68 Wilt Chamberlain led the NBA in which category, unusual for a center?

Assists. Stung by talk that he was a selfish scorer, he set out to prove a point and finished the season with the highest total in the league.

Which coach had Wilt Chamberlain on two different teams and persuaded him to shoot less and pass more?

Alex Hannum. He was not afraid to stand up to his star, and once Chamberlain agreed to pass first, a team that had always fallen short finally won the championship.

Wilt Chamberlain's 1968 move to the Lakers was the first time what had happened in the NBA?

A reigning MVP was traded. He had just been voted the league's best player for the fourth time, yet his old team accepted three far lesser players in return.

Which Lakers owner brought Wilt Chamberlain to Los Angeles in 1968?

Jack Kent Cooke. The Canadian-born tycoon had bought the Lakers three years earlier and built them the Forum, and under him they won the 1972 championship.

Which boxer did Wilt Chamberlain challenge to a fight after the 1971 NBA playoffs?

Muhammad Ali. A bout was set for the Houston Astrodome and Ali taunted him with cries of "Timber!", but Chamberlain withdrew and the fight never happened.

Which famed boxing trainer was lined up to prepare Wilt Chamberlain for a heavyweight bout that never happened?

Cus D'Amato. He had guided Floyd Patterson to the heavyweight title, and he had been pushing the idea of turning the 7-footer into a fighter since the mid-1960s.

Which retired NFL star acted as Wilt Chamberlain's manager for the boxing match he planned?

Jim Brown. The former Cleveland fullback said they even had a contract for the bout, with a famous trainer lined up, before Chamberlain backed out.

How did Wilt Chamberlain reportedly spend the night before his 100-point game?

Out partying until dawn. He is said to have boarded a morning train with no sleep and a hangover, only hours before the tip-off.

Which former Celtics guard coached Wilt Chamberlain's 1972 Lakers and introduced morning shoot-arounds?

Bill Sharman. His Lakers won 33 games in a row on the way to the title, and Chamberlain, a habitual latecomer, regularly showed up for the morning sessions.

Which young center did Wilt Chamberlain's Lakers beat in the 1972 playoffs on the way to the title?

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The league's MVP was ten years younger and led the defending champions, yet the Lakers beat them in six games.

Which ABA team did Wilt Chamberlain coach in 1973-74?

San Diego Conquistadors. They wanted him as a player-coach, but a legal fight with the Lakers kept him off the court, and he soon grew bored with only coaching.

Which sport did Wilt Chamberlain take up professionally after basketball?

Volleyball. He turned out for teams in the International Volleyball Association when he was around forty, and for a time he was the league's president as well as one of its players.

In which 1984 film did Wilt Chamberlain appear with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Grace Jones?

Conan the Destroyer. He played Bombaata, the towering captain of the guard who rides with Conan under secret orders to kill him.

Which Hall of Fame guard was Wilt Chamberlain's co-star on the Lakers team that won the 1972 title?

Jerry West. With the 35-year-old Chamberlain concentrating on defence, West's Lakers won 69 games, at the time the most in NBA history.

Which statistic, at which Wilt Chamberlain excelled, did the NBA only begin recording after he had retired?

Blocked shots. They were first counted in 1973-74, the season after he left the league, so one of the game's great shot-blockers has none to his name.

In his 1991 book A View from Above, Wilt Chamberlain made which notorious claim?

He had slept with 20,000 women. The boast came in the lifelong bachelor's second memoir, and it has been repeated in almost everything written about him since.

Which of Wilt Chamberlain's free-throw habits prompted a rule change?

Dunking them. He could leap from behind the free-throw line and drop the ball straight into the basket, so the rules were rewritten to keep a shooter's feet behind the line.

The NBA widened its foul lane to curb Wilt Chamberlain in 1964, having first widened it for which center?

George Mikan. The league doubled the lane from six feet to twelve in 1951 to move the Lakers' giant away from the basket, then added four more for Chamberlain.

Which NBA coach, running the summer league at Kutsher's, urged Wilt Chamberlain to pick a New England college?

Red Auerbach. A New England college would have let his Boston Celtics claim the schoolboy under the NBA's territorial draft rule, but Chamberlain never took the hint.

What summer job did the teenage Wilt Chamberlain hold at Kutsher's Hotel in the Catskills?

Bellhop. The resort's owners became lifelong friends of his, and its summer basketball league let the schoolboy test himself against college players.

NBA teams reportedly offered Wilt Chamberlain what in his fifties?

A comeback. Clubs reckoned he could still give them 15 or 20 solid minutes as a backup center, and he enjoyed the talk but never said yes.

Whom did Wilt Chamberlain's Kansas freshmen beat in his debut?

The varsity. Freshmen were barred from varsity play, so the newcomers took on the university's senior team, the favourites for the conference title, and won 81-71, with Chamberlain scoring about 40.

Which Republican presidential candidate did Chamberlain support in 1968 and 1972?

He accompanied Nixon to the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.

What was Wilt Chamberlain's first competitive sport?

Track. As a boy he dismissed basketball as "a game for sissies", and even as a college star he was still winning conference titles in the high jump.

In a 1960s advertisement, the 7 ft 1 in Wilt Chamberlain was shown trying to fit into which small car?

Volkswagen Beetle. The photograph showed him towering over the little car with one foot inside the open door, making the tallest star in sport the test of how much room it had.

Which award did Chamberlain win only in 1972?

Finals MVP. At 35 he was no longer a scorer, averaging under 15 points a game that season, but he anchored the defence and was voted to the All-Defensive First Team.