Speaker 1: Hey, what to welcome in. I'm Doug Gottlieb. This is
Speaker 1: All Ball, where, of course you listen to stories about
Speaker 1: basketball present, basketball pass sometimes we very off of basketball
Speaker 1: all together. And Karen Palmerans is my guest on this
Speaker 1: kind of shortened version of All Ball because this is
Speaker 1: the anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain's one hundred point game, and
Speaker 1: so instead of getting into the back and forth about
Speaker 1: about Will's all all time greatness or maybe even talking
Speaker 1: about present day selection spots for the upcoming n c
Speaker 1: A tournament or the NBA and how we evaluate current teams.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's all these nonsensical historical arguments about who's
Speaker 1: the top ten player who's not. I just thought we
Speaker 1: should get some perspective on something which is really one
Speaker 1: of the maybe the most remarkable record in all of sports.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these records are going to be
Speaker 1: or have been broken, right from Babe Ruth than Roger
Speaker 1: Marris obviously to Henry Aaron's record. Whether you think that
Speaker 1: Barry Bonds broke it on the up and up, I
Speaker 1: do not. I still consider Henry are in the all
Speaker 1: time home run king um and I think that Roger
Speaker 1: Maris is still the single season home run King that said,
Speaker 1: a hundred points in a game is in the an
Speaker 1: NBA is never going to be topped. It's just not
Speaker 1: you know, if Jordan couldn't do it, if Kobe couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. Um, it stands the reason that even Steph
Speaker 1: Curry couldn't do it, even though it feels easier in
Speaker 1: terms of three versus two and the volume of possessions
Speaker 1: in the pace of the game. That said, uh, it's
Speaker 1: a record that we don't know a ton about, right,
Speaker 1: Like if I was to ask you about the Hunter
Speaker 1: point game, you might know is in Hershey, Pennsylvania. You
Speaker 1: remember the world Chamberlain holding up the hundred on a
Speaker 1: piece of paper, and outside of that, you really don't
Speaker 1: know anything, right, So let's dig in. Let's find out.
Speaker 1: The man who wrote the book on the point game
Speaker 1: is Gary Pomerans. He joins us now on All Ball.
Speaker 1: So Gary, this, Uh, this book is amazing because it
Speaker 1: talks about something it's probably I don't know, top five
Speaker 1: most reference sports moment, sports stat sports accomplishment that there
Speaker 1: I believe isn't any take footage of like what is
Speaker 1: there actually footage of the game. No, all that exists
Speaker 1: because there were no TV cameras. There is the fourth
Speaker 1: quarter tape of the play by play calling w c
Speaker 1: AU radio Bill Campbell made the call, and that's it.
Speaker 1: Other than that. I mean, this thing was like a
Speaker 1: sunken galleon just resting on the ocean floor. Everyone had
Speaker 1: heard of it, as you say, but nobody knew anything
Speaker 1: about it. So so why what what led you to
Speaker 1: want to write write this book? So? When I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I was in l a and, um, you know,
Speaker 1: in the early seventies, I saw this old, muscled up
Speaker 1: Will Chamberlain playing for the Lakers, wearing his yellow headband,
Speaker 1: you know, um, defensive player primarily shot blocker, rebounder, And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, how did that guy score a hundred points?
Speaker 1: Of course, what I came to find out it wasn't
Speaker 1: that guy has scored under points. It was an earlier
Speaker 1: version of that guy seven one two and sixty pounds
Speaker 1: ran the floor like a train. Um, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I would go so far to say, is that Chamberlain
Speaker 1: um a decathlete basketball sensation? If you judge athleticism purely
Speaker 1: on the criteria of size, speed, strength, and agility, then
Speaker 1: Chamberlain might have been the greatest pure athlete of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. And if not, he's at least in that conversation.
Speaker 1: So decide, Okay, I want to I want to write
Speaker 1: this book about this moment where there is very little
Speaker 1: historical record. It's not that everybody doesn't know it exists,
Speaker 1: it's that there's just very lowest what's the process, like,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you even start such a project?
Speaker 1: So the first thing to do is find the players
Speaker 1: who were in the game, because they're the central figures
Speaker 1: in the event. And then it was finding you know,
Speaker 1: people like Harvey Pollock, that noted statistician forever part of
Speaker 1: the NBA for sixty years. He was a statistician that
Speaker 1: night and pr guy and everything else for the threadbare
Speaker 1: operation of the Philadelphia Warriors in UM. And then I
Speaker 1: even put in a note in the Harrisburg newspaper, Harrisburg
Speaker 1: being thirteen miles away, it's where the Nicks stayed that
Speaker 1: night when they came to play in Hershey, UM, asking
Speaker 1: anybody if they were at the game, to reach out
Speaker 1: to you by email, phone, whatever, and they and I
Speaker 1: heard from maybe ten twelve people how many of them
Speaker 1: had actually been there? I couldn't tell, but there were
Speaker 1: a few that clearly were there because their stories were
Speaker 1: interlocking and overlapping or corroborating other stories I'd heard about
Speaker 1: the game, like, this is like detective work. It is
Speaker 1: like detective work for an unsolved crime. Well, I think
Speaker 1: the Knicks did view it as a crime. They knew
Speaker 1: that if this guy scored a hundred points, people will
Speaker 1: be talking about it sixty years later. Why did they
Speaker 1: play in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Well, the NBA was not the
Speaker 1: NBA of today. Today, it's you know, glamour, glitz, exploding lights.
Speaker 1: Back then, it was a lounge act. It was a
Speaker 1: league in search of itself. The old joke was that
Speaker 1: the p A announcer would introduce the starting lineups and
Speaker 1: then would introduce each fan. There's Doug from Hershey and
Speaker 1: Phil from Harrisburg. I mean, there weren't many people dug
Speaker 1: in in that crowd. They said four thousand and twenty four.
Speaker 1: But even that is suspect, I think because I know
Speaker 1: of a number of kids who snuck into the arena
Speaker 1: and the usual time tested ways, and I know that
Speaker 1: Eddie Gottlieb, the skin Flip Flynn, owner of the Philadelphia Warriors,
Speaker 1: you know, famously inflated his crowds and got he as
Speaker 1: he was called, he was round, but his crowd counts
Speaker 1: never worked. Four one to four four thousand one four.
Speaker 1: That's the official attendance in Hershey, Okay, so you're starting
Speaker 1: to kind of piece things together. Obviously Will no longer
Speaker 1: was no longer with us um Who who is the
Speaker 1: best in terms of the players, who had the best
Speaker 1: kind of clearest recollection with the most I want to
Speaker 1: say integrity, maybe credibility. Well, you know, I also wrote
Speaker 1: a book about the crash of a small commuter plane,
Speaker 1: and you know, there were mostly survivors, there were some
Speaker 1: who perished in this crash. And I would go to one,
Speaker 1: then an interview, then the net. What plane? It was
Speaker 1: a delta commuter an Ember one, twenty twenty nine people
Speaker 1: aboard going from Atlanta to the Mississippi coast, an obscure plane.
Speaker 1: No one famous on a twenty nine aboard a crew
Speaker 1: of three pass singers, and it crashed and the people
Speaker 1: had time to get out, but they had to run
Speaker 1: through fire, and ultimately ten died and nineteen survived. And
Speaker 1: I spent time with eighteen of the nineteen. There's always
Speaker 1: one it doesn't want to be interviewed and piece together
Speaker 1: what they saw, what they experienced, what they knew. This
Speaker 1: was about three years post crash. Well, here's a basketball
Speaker 1: game now that I'm trying to reconstruct forty years post crash.
Speaker 1: One of the most interesting people for me to interview
Speaker 1: was Darryl Imhoff, the former center at Berkeley. Won gold
Speaker 1: medal with the nineteen sixty U S Olympics team in Rome,
Speaker 1: and Darryl had the unenviable task of covering the Dipper
Speaker 1: that night. And he told me that, you know every
Speaker 1: march onet. In other words, the eve of the anniversary
Speaker 1: of the hundred point game, he would break out into
Speaker 1: hives and get rashes, knowing that people were gonna call um.
Speaker 1: Darryl only played twenty minutes of that game. Uh and
Speaker 1: uh and felled out. He felled out, and that meant
Speaker 1: the Knick's next tallest player was six ft eight rookie
Speaker 1: Cleveland Buckner, who was kind of built like a flagpole,
Speaker 1: you know. He was very thin and and couldn't hardly
Speaker 1: muscle up to will but im Hoff. I met him
Speaker 1: in Eugene, Oregon at the US Basketball Academy where he
Speaker 1: worked at the time. Darryl has since sadly passed away,
Speaker 1: but there was an open court there as he was
Speaker 1: giving me a tour of the place, and I said, Darryl,
Speaker 1: come here for a second, and we went down into
Speaker 1: the key. I said, I want you to show me
Speaker 1: how you covered Will. What I really meant to say,
Speaker 1: has tried to cover Wilt? Uh that night. Now, Doug,
Speaker 1: I'm five eleven. I'm a poor stand in for Wilt.
Speaker 1: But um him Off was first. He played the Will character,
Speaker 1: and I was him Off. He said, Will would lean
Speaker 1: back and it was like a tree was about to
Speaker 1: fall on me with his upper body leaned back, and
Speaker 1: Um and he leaned back into me. Then we switched
Speaker 1: positions and he became him Off and I became Willed.
Speaker 1: He said, Will be down low here, and I remember
Speaker 1: the key was the lane was only twelve ft wide then,
Speaker 1: and in part because of Will, they widened it shortly
Speaker 1: after to sixteen. But when Wilt's got a twelve ft lane,
Speaker 1: he can be out of the lane. Take get the ball,
Speaker 1: take one step, a long lunging step, and duncan He's
Speaker 1: right there. William Off showed me how he took his
Speaker 1: left foot and sort of tried to wedge in Will's
Speaker 1: left foot to keep him from turning in. And then
Speaker 1: he took his knee and sort of put it in
Speaker 1: and buckled my left thigh. And then he took the
Speaker 1: point of his elbow and put it between my shoulder blades.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you, forty years later, he could inflict
Speaker 1: pain still with that. I mean it hurt. This is
Speaker 1: what he tried to do to Will Mutt, do anything
Speaker 1: he could to push him away from the basket. Of course,
Speaker 1: when Amo fouls out. The Knicks had another six ft
Speaker 1: ten inch center named Phil Jordan's pretty good player, you know,
Speaker 1: not very big either. I mean he's six ten but
Speaker 1: about two and ten pounds. Um. The problem was he'd
Speaker 1: gone on out on a late night bender the night before,
Speaker 1: and he was vomiting at the hotel Pan Harris. So
Speaker 1: anyone's gonna do much good playing against Will in hearsty.
Speaker 1: So as Will's point point total is climbing climbing, um,
Speaker 1: the Knicks just surround him. And Paul Arison, the great
Speaker 1: Hall of Famer who played for Wild's team, the Philadelphia Warriors,
Speaker 1: told me he said, if if somebody had walked into
Speaker 1: the arena, they would have thought the Knicks were way
Speaker 1: ahead because they were stalling, they're running a weave, they're
Speaker 1: doing anything to keep the ball from Will. And they
Speaker 1: would have thought the Warriors were losing, because as soon
Speaker 1: as the Knicks got the ball, the Warriors would quickly
Speaker 1: fall him. So it became a more of a chess match.
Speaker 1: And and you know, as I say the Knicks, they're
Speaker 1: they're intensity, their sense of dread intensified as this game
Speaker 1: went on. Was was it was there a point where
Speaker 1: the Warriors decided to go for the hundred? Like, was
Speaker 1: it before the game he want Will to try and
Speaker 1: see how many he could score? Or was it just
Speaker 1: the process of the game play and holy crap, world
Speaker 1: can get a hundred, let's keep feeding in the basketball.
Speaker 1: Well it was the latter. Um. You know, the Knicks
Speaker 1: were not a very good team. Earlier that year, they've
Speaker 1: given up sixty three points to the Lakers Jerry West.
Speaker 1: The year before, they've given up seventy one points to
Speaker 1: Elgin Baylor of the Lakers. Jack Kaiser, a writer in Philadelphia, wrote,
Speaker 1: you can find better benches in Central Park. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: so the Knicks. You begin, we weren't very good. They
Speaker 1: were missing their center of Phil Jordan's. That's a problem.
Speaker 1: But what what what people little consider about Will's Hunter
Speaker 1: point game is that the teammates need to go along
Speaker 1: with it. I mean, they need to subvert their ego, right,
Speaker 1: they need to give up the ball. And with seven
Speaker 1: and a half minutes ago, Harvey Pollock, the statistician, slides
Speaker 1: a sheet of paper over to Dave Zenkoff, the Zinc
Speaker 1: the Great p a announcer, and Dave Zinkoff says, ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, Will Chamberlain has just broken his own scoring record.
Speaker 1: He now has seventy nine points. Now everyone has context,
Speaker 1: because this is not a time where you look up
Speaker 1: at the big board above the court and you see
Speaker 1: number thirteen A is you know, seventy undre? Is there
Speaker 1: any possibility that they inflated, as you said, they inflayd
Speaker 1: the attendance, that they inflated Bill's points? No, no, they didn't.
Speaker 1: And and you know, it's it's kind of fun. This
Speaker 1: game has been launched into sports mythology. People don't believe
Speaker 1: it happened to People told Will, I was there the
Speaker 1: night you scored a hundred of Madison Square garden, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. You know. Um, people want to be
Speaker 1: close to great moments such as that. So no, it
Speaker 1: did happen. And it was not fifty dunks. Will It
Speaker 1: was running the floor. Will was scoring on putbacks. Will
Speaker 1: it was scoring on so called dipper dunks. And with
Speaker 1: forty six seconds to go, Um he scores. And you
Speaker 1: can hear Bill Campbell on the tape rebound. You know,
Speaker 1: look and Bill out to rook lick into Chamberlain. He
Speaker 1: made it. He made it a dipper dunk. You know,
Speaker 1: the fans are over the all over the floor, and
Speaker 1: that was the sons of the chocolate factory workers sweeping
Speaker 1: under the court to celebrate with will Um. He also
Speaker 1: made his free throws that night, that two. That was
Speaker 1: that was really the kind of the big difference was
Speaker 1: he was a poor free throw shooter, and in that
Speaker 1: night he made a much higher percentage of free throws.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, thirty two. And he was shooting him underhanded.
Speaker 1: He was shooting modern and he looked ridiculous. I mean,
Speaker 1: he bent down low, his knees flared out. He looked
Speaker 1: like an adult trying to sit in a Kindergartener's chair.
Speaker 1: But he made thirty two. By the way, Guy Rodgers
Speaker 1: and Paul Eirison also shot them underhanded at that time.
Speaker 1: Uh So, if there's any real miracle in hershey, it's not.
Speaker 1: The wild scored a hundred and said he made thirty
Speaker 1: two free throws. He'd scored seventy eight in a three
Speaker 1: overtime game earlier that season. And you know, you think
Speaker 1: about seventy eight points. A few of those shots that
Speaker 1: rolled out, if they go in, he makes a few
Speaker 1: more free throws, you know, in that game he's up
Speaker 1: to ninety and then all bets are off. So it
Speaker 1: had been prophecied that the young champ Lynn woods for
Speaker 1: a hundred points in a game. And and the thing
Speaker 1: is is Wilt was a luminous figure at that time.
Speaker 1: You know, he lived off Central Park in New York
Speaker 1: and drove down to Philadelphia for games. Really, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can imagine how popular that made him with teammates. And
Speaker 1: he had so he lived in it. It's an hour
Speaker 1: and a half, right even, I mean, and then probably
Speaker 1: even longer. But the thing is is Will had a
Speaker 1: fancy sports car, sports car that he drove at high
Speaker 1: speeds so whatever it would take you, and maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know how fast do you drive, but it would yeah,
Speaker 1: well it would take will longer or less time to
Speaker 1: get there than it would me. Um. He owned a racehorse,
Speaker 1: He owned a custom made Bentley. He co owned a
Speaker 1: Harlem nightclub called Big Wilt's Smallest Paradise. And you know
Speaker 1: it featured the likes of Red Fox and Edta James
Speaker 1: and Cannonball at early and Wilts there in his fine
Speaker 1: suit as the greeter. And he's moving through that club
Speaker 1: like he is all of New York and and so
Speaker 1: so he was an outsize figure at this is you
Speaker 1: know you think of of sports stars as celebrities today,
Speaker 1: he was already a celebrity in nineteen sixty two. And
Speaker 1: and the dated I mean John Glenn orbited Earth ten
Speaker 1: days earlier. This is the middle of the Kennedy in
Speaker 1: the abbreviated Kennedy administration. Fox Sports Radio has the best
Speaker 1: sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
Speaker 1: shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
Speaker 1: So how is how is the accomplishment received? Well, it
Speaker 1: was like the Mighty Oak fell in the forest in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, and no one heard, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, Harvey Pollock was was there writing for the
Speaker 1: Associated Press, the United Press and the Philadelphia Inquirer. There
Speaker 1: were only two writers there, neither from New York. No
Speaker 1: TV UM, and it took a little while for working
Speaker 1: to get out, you know. It was it was like
Speaker 1: they were waiting for the wagon trade or the pony
Speaker 1: expressed to show up with the news. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: Bill Russell's reaction was, well, the big fellow finally did it.
Speaker 1: And uh. For the longest time, Will did not embrace
Speaker 1: this performance. Um. He thought it fed the notion that
Speaker 1: he was an individualist only interested in patting his own stats.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the locker room after the game, Al Addles,
Speaker 1: his teammate, then told me that he remembers Will just
Speaker 1: staring at the stat book and thinking, just shaking his head.
Speaker 1: And Al said, what's a matter of big fella? And
Speaker 1: Will said, I took sixty three shots and Addle said, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you made thirty six of them. And it was
Speaker 1: only decades later when Will began to understand what he'd done.
Speaker 1: I mean, as the baseball star of the Red Sox,
Speaker 1: Ted Williams used to say he wanted to walk down
Speaker 1: the street and have people pointed him and say, there
Speaker 1: goes the greatest hitter who ever lived. Wild came to
Speaker 1: realize that as he walked down the street, people would
Speaker 1: point in him and say, there goes the guy who
Speaker 1: scored a hundred points. Who who Who's who's cursive or
Speaker 1: whose writing is on the famous piece of paper that
Speaker 1: says hundred points. Well, so that's Harvey Pollock. So Harvey
Speaker 1: was in the locker room and there was one photographer there,
Speaker 1: actually there were two, one from the Harrisburg Paper, but
Speaker 1: had other assignments, so he left after the first quarter. Well,
Speaker 1: that left one off duty associated press photographer named Paul Vats.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just any photographer. He had won a Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize the year before for a photo he had taken
Speaker 1: of the young President John Kennedy walking on a path.
Speaker 1: Was with the former President Dwight Eisenhower at Camp David.
Speaker 1: And uh so he's there with his ten year old son,
Speaker 1: taking him there for as a gift for his tenth birthday.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the third quarter, Bathist told
Speaker 1: me he said to his son, you stay here I'm
Speaker 1: going out in the car to get my camera. So
Speaker 1: he opens the trunk of his car, grabs his Cameron
Speaker 1: comes in. He's got twenty shots and he's only got
Speaker 1: one roll left. He wasn't planning to work that night,
Speaker 1: so he plants himself under the basket and he gets
Speaker 1: a few game photos, and then he goes in the
Speaker 1: locker room afterwards and says to Harvey Pollock, Harvey, you
Speaker 1: think we can get Will to pose? And Harvey, thinking fast,
Speaker 1: said hey. Hef to Jim heffern In, one of the
Speaker 1: film one of the two Philadelphia sports writers there that night,
Speaker 1: you got a sheet of paper I can borrow? And
Speaker 1: Heffernan gives him an eight and a half by eleven sheet,
Speaker 1: and Harvey, in a brainstorm, writes one zero zero, gives
Speaker 1: it to Will, and Will holds it up. Now that's
Speaker 1: become maybe the most iconic basketball photo ever. Um and
Speaker 1: it it's really those stage, completely staged. It's it's a
Speaker 1: great photo because if you look on the wall behind Will,
Speaker 1: you can see his trousers and a jacket just hanging
Speaker 1: from hooks. He's on a solitary bench. He's sitting there,
Speaker 1: his knees are up in his chest. He's his face
Speaker 1: is covered with sweat. He's sort of smiling and cheapishly.
Speaker 1: You can see one of the good luck rubber bands
Speaker 1: he always wore at his wrist. It's it's that great moment.
Speaker 1: It's the Dippers moment. It's the night Will scored a
Speaker 1: hundred points. And that's why that photo I think we'll
Speaker 1: live forever. He wore rubber bands on his wrists. Well,
Speaker 1: he wore rubber bands two on his socks to keep
Speaker 1: them from falling down during games. He it's something that
Speaker 1: dated back to high school. And he kept two spares,
Speaker 1: one on each wrist. So you had quitters. That's not
Speaker 1: quitter when you pull up a sock and won't stay up.
Speaker 1: Quitters back in the day would stay up, so he
Speaker 1: needed That's that's amazing, That's that's really a marketing so
Speaker 1: um so, yeah, it's it's the tree that fell in
Speaker 1: the forest. Um uh so that how did that year
Speaker 1: end up? Because again, it's it's just such a weird
Speaker 1: moment that everybody remembers. Will average fifty, okay, and I
Speaker 1: think only five rebounds and he had a hundred. But
Speaker 1: it's like the complete opposite of now where the only
Speaker 1: thing anybody remembers is who actually won the title. How
Speaker 1: are the Warriors that year? Well, they were good, they
Speaker 1: were you know, they won forty nine games. They were
Speaker 1: forty nine and thirty one. They finished eleven games behind
Speaker 1: the Celtics. They went into the postseason then lost again
Speaker 1: to Bill Russell. Um. Uh. And you know, by the way,
Speaker 1: there is one statistic from that season, Doug that people
Speaker 1: don't know, and they should know because it may last
Speaker 1: longer than the hundred point game and uh. And that
Speaker 1: is that he averaged that season forty eight and a
Speaker 1: half minutes played per game. Now the game, as you know,
Speaker 1: it's forty eight minutes minutes. They were overtime games. There
Speaker 1: was a triple overtime game and another overtime game. He
Speaker 1: only missed eight minutes and thirty three seconds of the
Speaker 1: entire season. That's how is that possible? Well, it's possible
Speaker 1: because the referee, Norm Drucker threw him out of a
Speaker 1: game with eight minutes forty three seconds left, and so
Speaker 1: he never came out of games. Before the season, he
Speaker 1: told the new coach, the college legend Frank McGuire, a
Speaker 1: dandy from Greenwich Village, to coach, you know you want
Speaker 1: me to play. Um, I can't help this team sitting
Speaker 1: on the bench. And besides, if you put me on
Speaker 1: the bench and then bring me into the game back in,
Speaker 1: it's gonna take me three minutes to get this body
Speaker 1: warmed up. So he was like, okay, Wilty, you'll play
Speaker 1: every every game. And so he did. You know you
Speaker 1: think of time management of players, you know, keeping their
Speaker 1: minutes down, sometimes not playing them at all. Just didn't
Speaker 1: happen then, So he played all but eight minutes in
Speaker 1: change of the entire season, never came out in eight
Speaker 1: games other than that one time when he was thrown.
Speaker 1: That's more mind blowing than anything I've ever heard. Yep,
Speaker 1: ever I've ever heard. That's that's incredible. That's incredible. If
Speaker 1: you get doing any NBA player today, you probably get
Speaker 1: a lost it the players. I'm not playing Tuesday. It's
Speaker 1: the best with my best, my dream to never come out. Um.
Speaker 1: So he couldn't beat the Celtics. And my ley father
Speaker 1: was a basketball coach. He had the opinion of Will
Speaker 1: that he wasn't a winner, that he wasn't a big
Speaker 1: game player, that Russell was. When when you're researching Russell.
Speaker 1: What was the general opinion of him, other than his
Speaker 1: incredible physical dominance. Well, the thing about Russell was his
Speaker 1: shock blocking and defensive skills. Will it was an offensive player.
Speaker 1: He had his defensive moments too. Um but um, you know,
Speaker 1: Russell was surrounded by a constellation of stars. Will had
Speaker 1: good players around him at different times during his career.
Speaker 1: At the end of the Lakers when he won his
Speaker 1: second and final title, Jerry West and and an old
Speaker 1: Elgin Baylor. But yes, and he was old too, yeah right,
Speaker 1: and and um you know when year Will playing for
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia seventy sixers led the league and assists and
Speaker 1: won a title. Any crowd leading the league and says me,
Speaker 1: he said, that'd be like Babe Bruce leading league and
Speaker 1: sacrifice bunts. Um but but um, the thing about Russell
Speaker 1: is Ross Russell traumatized shooters. I remember I interviewed Pete
Speaker 1: Newell for this book, and he had um coached Cal
Speaker 1: back in the day Russell was He's playing at USF
Speaker 1: and he said Russell would come like almost out of
Speaker 1: the shadows and block shots of his best shooters. And
Speaker 1: and it's so traumatized Cal's best shooters that they weren't
Speaker 1: the same for another three or four games. It's like
Speaker 1: they still feared Russell, who's not even in the game.
Speaker 1: It's gonna show up here and block their shot. Um
Speaker 1: Will traumatize people with his offense. And this year, nine
Speaker 1: sixty two, the big scoring sensation was the rookie Walt Bellamy.
Speaker 1: He average, He was one of five guys to average
Speaker 1: thirty points a game that year. And when you know, Will,
Speaker 1: Will ramps up his intensity when he plays against somebody
Speaker 1: who's getting a lot of attention. So here comes Bellamy
Speaker 1: to center court, shakes Will's hand and said, hello, Mr Chamberlain,
Speaker 1: I'm Walter Bellamy. And Will shakes his hand and says, hello, Walter,
Speaker 1: you won't get a shot off in the first half,
Speaker 1: and Will blocks his first nine shots inside the free
Speaker 1: throw line. Now they come back out for the second
Speaker 1: half tip, which they did then and uh they and
Speaker 1: Will looks at Bellamy and says, okay, Walter, now you
Speaker 1: can play and wild out scores a fourteen and wins
Speaker 1: the game. You know that that was a quintessential Wilt moment.
Speaker 1: The goliath syndrome. You know, seven ft one, but he
Speaker 1: needs to be bigger, and he pumps up himself and
Speaker 1: there he is. Hm um. All these years, all these
Speaker 1: years moved What what is the most fascinating takeaway that
Speaker 1: people will read this book and go, I mean, the
Speaker 1: stat obviously blows my mind. The idea that there's no
Speaker 1: live video of it, only the fourth quarter recording, like
Speaker 1: all these other things. But for you, with all the
Speaker 1: time and research you spent, what's the what's the nugget
Speaker 1: that somebody's gonna walk away going that one? I had
Speaker 1: no idea. I didn't see coming, and I can't believe. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not so much a nugget as it is context,
Speaker 1: the symbolism of the game. People view it as a
Speaker 1: carnival act. It was not a carnival act. What people
Speaker 1: little remember today, particularly young fans, is that in those
Speaker 1: early years, the NBA had a racial quota that limited
Speaker 1: the number of black players to just a few per team.
Speaker 1: And uh, the Philadelphia Warriors had three black players in
Speaker 1: that game, Will Chamberlain, Aladdles and the guard Guy Rogers,
Speaker 1: who had twenty assists at night, almost all of them
Speaker 1: to wilt. And what Will did that night in Hershey
Speaker 1: and by averaging fifty a game that season was to
Speaker 1: symbolically blow apart the quota. This league was not going
Speaker 1: to be a white man's enclave anymore. M. I didn't
Speaker 1: know the quota. I mean, there's there's all these all
Speaker 1: these incredible things. You didn't know, uh um about it.
Speaker 1: There were there were quite a few players, black players
Speaker 1: playing in the Eastern League getting fifty seventy five bucks
Speaker 1: a game on the weekends, who were far superior players
Speaker 1: to Um. You know, the NBA players on the bench,
Speaker 1: the white guys, and some of them in the starting
Speaker 1: lineups as well, And there was a lot of pain
Speaker 1: in that for them. These interviews I had with some
Speaker 1: of the early black pioneers in the NBA. UM, it's
Speaker 1: important for us to remember this. It's really Chamberlain himself
Speaker 1: is such a mythical figure. Right. You have the hunter
Speaker 1: point game, you have the bragging about the ten thousand women.
Speaker 1: Now I'm learning about the four D eight and a
Speaker 1: half minutes. Um, I didn't know. Like he lived in
Speaker 1: New York and played in Philadelphia. Those things are amazing.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that it took him years to really embrace
Speaker 1: the Hunter Points. Did anybody tell you why why why
Speaker 1: he eventually? What was the moment or what was the
Speaker 1: reasoning behind him finally embracing it. I think it was
Speaker 1: a gradual pros says. It was almost like when he
Speaker 1: came to embrace it, it was like a father embracing
Speaker 1: his long estrange son. You know that, Um it had
Speaker 1: meaning and and it was a profound experience for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. For Will, it was just one more
Speaker 1: mega scoring night. You know, the numbers were astronomically that
Speaker 1: season he averaged more. He scored more than fifty points
Speaker 1: forty three times that year. So when he goes into
Speaker 1: the fourth quarter with sixty nine points, as hard as
Speaker 1: it is to for us to just put our rapp
Speaker 1: our arms around that, you know, it wasn't that uncommon.
Speaker 1: You know. You think today, with the change in technology,
Speaker 1: what would happen if an NBA player goes into the
Speaker 1: fourth quarter with sixty nine points? I mean, fans would
Speaker 1: be tweeting it all over the place. ESPN sound trucks
Speaker 1: would be circling Hershey Arena if that happened there, although
Speaker 1: it wouldn't happen in Hershey. Now UM technology would lift
Speaker 1: it um in a way that Will's hundred was not lifted.
Speaker 1: Look when Kobe scored eighty one points in a game
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, that two against the last place team,
Speaker 1: the Toronto Raptors, fifteen minutes after he scored his eighty
Speaker 1: one You could buy a DVD of it online, right,
Speaker 1: And and I wish we could have had a DVD
Speaker 1: of Wild's hundred point game. On the one hand. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it's it's it lives in the imagination.
Speaker 1: It's launched into mythology, you know, it's it's a part
Speaker 1: of Americana. Now, it's a piece of Americana like Andy
Speaker 1: warhol soup games. You know, Will Chamberlain's hundred point game. It's. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a moment that I think the Golden State Warriors,
Speaker 1: the lineal descendants of Will's Philadelphia Warriors, should embrace more.
Speaker 1: They should, they should, um, you know, promote the fact
Speaker 1: that it's their guy, Will Chamberlain, who later, by the way,
Speaker 1: moved out. And after he scored a hundred points that
Speaker 1: season ended. The team was sold to San Francisco and
Speaker 1: they became the San Francisco Warriors. And the next year
Speaker 1: Will for that team in San Francisco average forty four
Speaker 1: point eight points a game, and then thirty seven, and
Speaker 1: then you know, another season, half season, the average about
Speaker 1: thirty six points a game. Just still astronomical numbers, not fifty,
Speaker 1: but still statistical outliers in the you know, in the
Speaker 1: history of the NBA, numbers that only Will Chamberlain could
Speaker 1: have produced. Amazing. I was thinking Rushmore of great individual
Speaker 1: single game accomplishments. It's on an it's it is I
Speaker 1: cannot I'm trying to think, like you know, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think if there's if there's who, what the other
Speaker 1: three would be? In American sports, Yeah, I mean GAYL.
Speaker 1: Sayers had a game the running back of the Chicago Bears,
Speaker 1: and I think it was N three, playing on a muddy,
Speaker 1: rainy day, and Wrigley Field scored six touchdowns. You know,
Speaker 1: um produced three hundred and thirty six all purpose yards
Speaker 1: returned upon eighty five yards for a touchdown, caught a pass.
Speaker 1: I we just had one of those, one of those games.
Speaker 1: But basketball allows numbers to be built to the stratosphere
Speaker 1: in ways of oports don't. And and you know, baseball
Speaker 1: guys not gonna hit twelve home runs in a game. No,
Speaker 1: Reggie's Reggie's three home runs in the World Series is
Speaker 1: is probably baseball's moment that compares and and maybe but
Speaker 1: three versus a hundred. I mean, I I understand, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just like on the fly thinking what possibly could
Speaker 1: match up? What like? That's that's how powerful this moment is.
Speaker 1: There really isn't anything. And it's not like, well, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of guys that had ninety, Like nobody at ninety,
Speaker 1: nobody in five, nobody in eighty two. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: Kobe's eighty two is like the new base camp from
Speaker 1: which to climb up Everest to get to you know this,
Speaker 1: but you have to have three point shots even to
Speaker 1: make that happen, right so, and which Will didn't have
Speaker 1: Will did have a twelve foot lane, right so, Phil Jordan,
Speaker 1: The sheer volume of shots is remarkable, the volume of
Speaker 1: free throws, you know, so he shot with sixty three
Speaker 1: shots and thirty two free throws. Correct. The whole thing
Speaker 1: is nuts. It's nuts, and and some of it's just
Speaker 1: the magic of one hundred, you know, um, in our culture,
Speaker 1: it suggests a perfect score on a test a century.
Speaker 1: You know, there's something golden about it. No, seven doesn't
Speaker 1: do it. His teammates would would point out that he
Speaker 1: got called for defensive goaltending three times in that game,
Speaker 1: so really you scored a hundred. Yeah, that's amazing. Um, Garry,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me. This is fascinating
Speaker 1: to anybody who loves the game and maybe even history.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's more of a historical piece that just
Speaker 1: about sports, right, because you're pay being the picture of
Speaker 1: a completely different era at a moment in time which
Speaker 1: everybody knows but doesn't actually know. Is that is that
Speaker 1: a fair fair to say? Yes, fair to say? And
Speaker 1: that's why I went after it in this book World
Speaker 1: ninety two, because, um, it matters. That's a moment that
Speaker 1: needs to be uh understood, not just known, but understood.
Speaker 1: I mean the idea that Will Chamberlain goes out to
Speaker 1: you know, the land of the Amish, um to this
Speaker 1: utopian chocolate town, a company town in Hershey, and and
Speaker 1: does you know commits really a revolutionary act that makes
Speaker 1: a statement about race. Um is amazing. It's amazing, Garry.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time and I really
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. I enjoyed talking with you. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me on. Thank you here. Yeah. What an interesting look, right,
Speaker 1: and a historical moment that you know of, but until
Speaker 1: this pod you didn't know about. Help you appreciate, help
Speaker 1: you enjoyed it. My thanks to Gary for sharing that
Speaker 1: time with us. Reminder you can pick up his book
Speaker 1: on Amazon or go to Barnes and Noble, or of
Speaker 1: course there's the Audible books as well. Reminder of the
Speaker 1: Doug Gotlib shows daily three to six Eastern time, twelve
Speaker 1: to three Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. The I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app where you downloaded this podcast, you can down
Speaker 1: load that as a podcast as well. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening. I'm Doug Gottlieb. This is Elball