WEBVTT - Wilt's 100 Point Game Inside Story with Chamberlain Biographer Gary Pomerantz 0:00:07.040 --> 0:00:10.280 Hey, what to welcome in. I'm Doug Gottlieb. This is 0:00:10.440 --> 0:00:15.120 All Ball, where, of course you listen to stories about 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:19.840 basketball present, basketball pass sometimes we very off of basketball 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:23.680 all together. And Karen Palmerans is my guest on this 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:27.319 kind of shortened version of All Ball because this is 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:32.879 the anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain's one hundred point game, and 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:36.280 so instead of getting into the back and forth about 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.960 about Will's all all time greatness or maybe even talking 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:45.400 about present day selection spots for the upcoming n c 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:51.000 A tournament or the NBA and how we evaluate current teams. 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:54.400 Of course, there's all these nonsensical historical arguments about who's 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:56.720 the top ten player who's not. I just thought we 0:00:56.720 --> 0:01:01.000 should get some perspective on something which is really one 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:04.679 of the maybe the most remarkable record in all of sports. 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:07.760 You know, some of these records are going to be 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:12.080 or have been broken, right from Babe Ruth than Roger 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:16.000 Marris obviously to Henry Aaron's record. Whether you think that 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:18.280 Barry Bonds broke it on the up and up, I 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:21.600 do not. I still consider Henry are in the all 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:25.600 time home run king um and I think that Roger 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.560 Maris is still the single season home run King that said, 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.000 a hundred points in a game is in the an 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:34.640 NBA is never going to be topped. It's just not 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:37.919 you know, if Jordan couldn't do it, if Kobe couldn't 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:41.840 do it. Um, it stands the reason that even Steph 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:45.480 Curry couldn't do it, even though it feels easier in 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:49.760 terms of three versus two and the volume of possessions 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:54.840 in the pace of the game. That said, uh, it's 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.320 a record that we don't know a ton about, right, 0:01:58.320 --> 0:01:59.760 Like if I was to ask you about the Hunter 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:03.040 point game, you might know is in Hershey, Pennsylvania. You 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:05.400 remember the world Chamberlain holding up the hundred on a 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.560 piece of paper, and outside of that, you really don't 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:12.120 know anything, right, So let's dig in. Let's find out. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.400 The man who wrote the book on the point game 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.280 is Gary Pomerans. He joins us now on All Ball. 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:26.640 So Gary, this, Uh, this book is amazing because it 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:30.880 talks about something it's probably I don't know, top five 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:38.040 most reference sports moment, sports stat sports accomplishment that there 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:42.960 I believe isn't any take footage of like what is 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:46.239 there actually footage of the game. No, all that exists 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.760 because there were no TV cameras. There is the fourth 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:52.639 quarter tape of the play by play calling w c 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:56.160 AU radio Bill Campbell made the call, and that's it. 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:58.280 Other than that. I mean, this thing was like a 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:02.079 sunken galleon just resting on the ocean floor. Everyone had 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:04.320 heard of it, as you say, but nobody knew anything 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:07.160 about it. So so why what what led you to 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:09.080 want to write write this book? So? When I was 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:12.400 a kid, I was in l a and, um, you know, 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:15.000 in the early seventies, I saw this old, muscled up 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.120 Will Chamberlain playing for the Lakers, wearing his yellow headband, 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:24.440 you know, um, defensive player primarily shot blocker, rebounder, And 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.440 I'm thinking, how did that guy score a hundred points? 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:28.920 Of course, what I came to find out it wasn't 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:31.560 that guy has scored under points. It was an earlier 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:35.320 version of that guy seven one two and sixty pounds 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.960 ran the floor like a train. Um, you know, I mean, 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:41.640 I would go so far to say, is that Chamberlain 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:48.760 um a decathlete basketball sensation? If you judge athleticism purely 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:52.600 on the criteria of size, speed, strength, and agility, then 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:54.520 Chamberlain might have been the greatest pure athlete of the 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:57.760 twentieth century. And if not, he's at least in that conversation. 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.560 So decide, Okay, I want to I want to write 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:06.240 this book about this moment where there is very little 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:09.560 historical record. It's not that everybody doesn't know it exists, 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:12.360 it's that there's just very lowest what's the process, like, 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:14.600 how do you how do you even start such a project? 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:16.800 So the first thing to do is find the players 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:19.680 who were in the game, because they're the central figures 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.520 in the event. And then it was finding you know, 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.840 people like Harvey Pollock, that noted statistician forever part of 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:30.159 the NBA for sixty years. He was a statistician that 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:33.640 night and pr guy and everything else for the threadbare 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:37.839 operation of the Philadelphia Warriors in UM. And then I 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:42.080 even put in a note in the Harrisburg newspaper, Harrisburg 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.720 being thirteen miles away, it's where the Nicks stayed that 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:48.640 night when they came to play in Hershey, UM, asking 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:50.920 anybody if they were at the game, to reach out 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:52.839 to you by email, phone, whatever, and they and I 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:56.240 heard from maybe ten twelve people how many of them 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:58.040 had actually been there? I couldn't tell, but there were 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:02.040 a few that clearly were there because their stories were 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:06.400 interlocking and overlapping or corroborating other stories I'd heard about 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:09.200 the game, like, this is like detective work. It is 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:13.600 like detective work for an unsolved crime. Well, I think 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:15.880 the Knicks did view it as a crime. They knew 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:17.960 that if this guy scored a hundred points, people will 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:20.600 be talking about it sixty years later. Why did they 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:24.520 play in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Well, the NBA was not the 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:28.440 NBA of today. Today, it's you know, glamour, glitz, exploding lights. 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:30.600 Back then, it was a lounge act. It was a 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:33.560 league in search of itself. The old joke was that 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:36.960 the p A announcer would introduce the starting lineups and 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.080 then would introduce each fan. There's Doug from Hershey and 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:43.200 Phil from Harrisburg. I mean, there weren't many people dug 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:47.279 in in that crowd. They said four thousand and twenty four. 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.680 But even that is suspect, I think because I know 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.280 of a number of kids who snuck into the arena 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.200 and the usual time tested ways, and I know that 0:05:56.320 --> 0:06:00.440 Eddie Gottlieb, the skin Flip Flynn, owner of the Philadelphia Warriors, 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.000 you know, famously inflated his crowds and got he as 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.360 he was called, he was round, but his crowd counts 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.760 never worked. Four one to four four thousand one four. 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:13.920 That's the official attendance in Hershey, Okay, so you're starting 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.839 to kind of piece things together. Obviously Will no longer 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:21.880 was no longer with us um Who who is the 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.800 best in terms of the players, who had the best 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.240 kind of clearest recollection with the most I want to 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:33.400 say integrity, maybe credibility. Well, you know, I also wrote 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.520 a book about the crash of a small commuter plane, 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.080 and you know, there were mostly survivors, there were some 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.640 who perished in this crash. And I would go to one, 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:47.960 then an interview, then the net. What plane? It was 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:52.359 a delta commuter an Ember one, twenty twenty nine people 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:55.599 aboard going from Atlanta to the Mississippi coast, an obscure plane. 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:57.840 No one famous on a twenty nine aboard a crew 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:02.400 of three pass singers, and it crashed and the people 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:04.800 had time to get out, but they had to run 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.680 through fire, and ultimately ten died and nineteen survived. And 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:12.000 I spent time with eighteen of the nineteen. There's always 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:15.640 one it doesn't want to be interviewed and piece together 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:18.080 what they saw, what they experienced, what they knew. This 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:21.640 was about three years post crash. Well, here's a basketball 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.559 game now that I'm trying to reconstruct forty years post crash. 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.400 One of the most interesting people for me to interview 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:32.119 was Darryl Imhoff, the former center at Berkeley. Won gold 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:35.840 medal with the nineteen sixty U S Olympics team in Rome, 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:40.360 and Darryl had the unenviable task of covering the Dipper 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:44.200 that night. And he told me that, you know every 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:47.000 march onet. In other words, the eve of the anniversary 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:49.000 of the hundred point game, he would break out into 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:52.840 hives and get rashes, knowing that people were gonna call um. 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:57.520 Darryl only played twenty minutes of that game. Uh and 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.640 uh and felled out. He felled out, and that meant 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.560 the Knick's next tallest player was six ft eight rookie 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:07.600 Cleveland Buckner, who was kind of built like a flagpole, 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.120 you know. He was very thin and and couldn't hardly 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:14.240 muscle up to will but im Hoff. I met him 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:17.240 in Eugene, Oregon at the US Basketball Academy where he 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:21.360 worked at the time. Darryl has since sadly passed away, 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:23.280 but there was an open court there as he was 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:25.800 giving me a tour of the place, and I said, Darryl, 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:28.720 come here for a second, and we went down into 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:30.480 the key. I said, I want you to show me 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:32.800 how you covered Will. What I really meant to say, 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.240 has tried to cover Wilt? Uh that night. Now, Doug, 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:39.200 I'm five eleven. I'm a poor stand in for Wilt. 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:44.839 But um him Off was first. He played the Will character, 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:46.679 and I was him Off. He said, Will would lean 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:48.839 back and it was like a tree was about to 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.520 fall on me with his upper body leaned back, and 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:54.720 Um and he leaned back into me. Then we switched 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.199 positions and he became him Off and I became Willed. 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.000 He said, Will be down low here, and I remember 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:04.959 the key was the lane was only twelve ft wide then, 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:07.520 and in part because of Will, they widened it shortly 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:11.480 after to sixteen. But when Wilt's got a twelve ft lane, 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:13.960 he can be out of the lane. Take get the ball, 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:17.680 take one step, a long lunging step, and duncan He's 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:20.840 right there. William Off showed me how he took his 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.400 left foot and sort of tried to wedge in Will's 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:25.480 left foot to keep him from turning in. And then 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:27.520 he took his knee and sort of put it in 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:31.400 and buckled my left thigh. And then he took the 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:35.280 point of his elbow and put it between my shoulder blades. 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:37.840 I'm gonna tell you, forty years later, he could inflict 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:40.640 pain still with that. I mean it hurt. This is 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:42.880 what he tried to do to Will Mutt, do anything 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:46.040 he could to push him away from the basket. Of course, 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.760 when Amo fouls out. The Knicks had another six ft 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:51.880 ten inch center named Phil Jordan's pretty good player, you know, 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:54.160 not very big either. I mean he's six ten but 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:58.560 about two and ten pounds. Um. The problem was he'd 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:01.960 gone on out on a late night bender the night before, 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:04.880 and he was vomiting at the hotel Pan Harris. So 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.760 anyone's gonna do much good playing against Will in hearsty. 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:12.480 So as Will's point point total is climbing climbing, um, 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.760 the Knicks just surround him. And Paul Arison, the great 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:19.160 Hall of Famer who played for Wild's team, the Philadelphia Warriors, 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:21.840 told me he said, if if somebody had walked into 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:24.199 the arena, they would have thought the Knicks were way 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:26.640 ahead because they were stalling, they're running a weave, they're 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:28.760 doing anything to keep the ball from Will. And they 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:30.760 would have thought the Warriors were losing, because as soon 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:32.839 as the Knicks got the ball, the Warriors would quickly 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:35.679 fall him. So it became a more of a chess match. 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:39.680 And and you know, as I say the Knicks, they're 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:43.520 they're intensity, their sense of dread intensified as this game 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:47.800 went on. Was was it was there a point where 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:50.640 the Warriors decided to go for the hundred? Like, was 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:53.200 it before the game he want Will to try and 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:55.439 see how many he could score? Or was it just 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:59.280 the process of the game play and holy crap, world 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:01.319 can get a hundred, let's keep feeding in the basketball. 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:04.520 Well it was the latter. Um. You know, the Knicks 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:06.560 were not a very good team. Earlier that year, they've 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.320 given up sixty three points to the Lakers Jerry West. 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:11.920 The year before, they've given up seventy one points to 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:17.480 Elgin Baylor of the Lakers. Jack Kaiser, a writer in Philadelphia, wrote, 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.520 you can find better benches in Central Park. Um. You know, 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:23.840 so the Knicks. You begin, we weren't very good. They 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:28.200 were missing their center of Phil Jordan's. That's a problem. 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.600 But what what what people little consider about Will's Hunter 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:35.920 point game is that the teammates need to go along 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.040 with it. I mean, they need to subvert their ego, right, 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:42.319 they need to give up the ball. And with seven 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:45.960 and a half minutes ago, Harvey Pollock, the statistician, slides 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.440 a sheet of paper over to Dave Zenkoff, the Zinc 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:52.320 the Great p a announcer, and Dave Zinkoff says, ladies 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:56.520 and gentlemen, Will Chamberlain has just broken his own scoring record. 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:04.000 He now has seventy nine points. Now everyone has context, 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:05.760 because this is not a time where you look up 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:07.680 at the big board above the court and you see 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:10.320 number thirteen A is you know, seventy undre? Is there 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:13.440 any possibility that they inflated, as you said, they inflayd 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:17.840 the attendance, that they inflated Bill's points? No, no, they didn't. 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:20.720 And and you know, it's it's kind of fun. This 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:24.400 game has been launched into sports mythology. People don't believe 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.040 it happened to People told Will, I was there the 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.720 night you scored a hundred of Madison Square garden, that 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:32.160 kind of stuff. You know. Um, people want to be 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:35.480 close to great moments such as that. So no, it 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:39.679 did happen. And it was not fifty dunks. Will It 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:43.400 was running the floor. Will was scoring on putbacks. Will 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:46.240 it was scoring on so called dipper dunks. And with 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:49.760 forty six seconds to go, Um he scores. And you 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.920 can hear Bill Campbell on the tape rebound. You know, 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:55.959 look and Bill out to rook lick into Chamberlain. He 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.880 made it. He made it a dipper dunk. You know, 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:01.840 the fans are over the all over the floor, and 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:04.520 that was the sons of the chocolate factory workers sweeping 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:08.920 under the court to celebrate with will Um. He also 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:10.720 made his free throws that night, that two. That was 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:13.040 that was really the kind of the big difference was 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:15.280 he was a poor free throw shooter, and in that 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:17.440 night he made a much higher percentage of free throws. 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:21.040 Well yeah, thirty two. And he was shooting him underhanded. 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:23.480 He was shooting modern and he looked ridiculous. I mean, 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.440 he bent down low, his knees flared out. He looked 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:28.120 like an adult trying to sit in a Kindergartener's chair. 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:32.000 But he made thirty two. By the way, Guy Rodgers 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.880 and Paul Eirison also shot them underhanded at that time. 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:39.560 Uh So, if there's any real miracle in hershey, it's not. 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:41.800 The wild scored a hundred and said he made thirty 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:45.000 two free throws. He'd scored seventy eight in a three 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:48.199 overtime game earlier that season. And you know, you think 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:50.280 about seventy eight points. A few of those shots that 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:52.320 rolled out, if they go in, he makes a few 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:54.920 more free throws, you know, in that game he's up 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:57.680 to ninety and then all bets are off. So it 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:00.960 had been prophecied that the young champ Lynn woods for 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:03.920 a hundred points in a game. And and the thing 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:08.280 is is Wilt was a luminous figure at that time. 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:12.200 You know, he lived off Central Park in New York 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:15.960 and drove down to Philadelphia for games. Really, yeah, you 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:18.839 can imagine how popular that made him with teammates. And 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:20.680 he had so he lived in it. It's an hour 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:22.720 and a half, right even, I mean, and then probably 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:25.760 even longer. But the thing is is Will had a 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:28.200 fancy sports car, sports car that he drove at high 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:30.720 speeds so whatever it would take you, and maybe I 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:34.040 don't know how fast do you drive, but it would yeah, 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.960 well it would take will longer or less time to 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:40.040 get there than it would me. Um. He owned a racehorse, 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:44.760 He owned a custom made Bentley. He co owned a 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:50.080 Harlem nightclub called Big Wilt's Smallest Paradise. And you know 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:53.800 it featured the likes of Red Fox and Edta James 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:56.560 and Cannonball at early and Wilts there in his fine 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.520 suit as the greeter. And he's moving through that club 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:03.160 like he is all of New York and and so 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.560 so he was an outsize figure at this is you 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:10.520 know you think of of sports stars as celebrities today, 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:13.520 he was already a celebrity in nineteen sixty two. And 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.640 and the dated I mean John Glenn orbited Earth ten 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:19.120 days earlier. This is the middle of the Kennedy in 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:24.080 the abbreviated Kennedy administration. Fox Sports Radio has the best 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:26.920 sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:30.440 shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.600 I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live. 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:38.600 So how is how is the accomplishment received? Well, it 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:40.520 was like the Mighty Oak fell in the forest in 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.280 the middle of the night, and no one heard, you know, 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:47.320 I mean, Harvey Pollock was was there writing for the 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.560 Associated Press, the United Press and the Philadelphia Inquirer. There 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:53.840 were only two writers there, neither from New York. No 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:58.640 TV UM, and it took a little while for working 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.280 to get out, you know. It was it was like 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:03.680 they were waiting for the wagon trade or the pony 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:06.880 expressed to show up with the news. Um. But you know, 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:10.200 Bill Russell's reaction was, well, the big fellow finally did it. 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:15.600 And uh. For the longest time, Will did not embrace 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:19.480 this performance. Um. He thought it fed the notion that 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.920 he was an individualist only interested in patting his own stats. 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.760 In fact, in the locker room after the game, Al Addles, 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:28.760 his teammate, then told me that he remembers Will just 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:33.320 staring at the stat book and thinking, just shaking his head. 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:35.720 And Al said, what's a matter of big fella? And 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:40.520 Will said, I took sixty three shots and Addle said, yeah, 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:44.000 but you made thirty six of them. And it was 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:48.600 only decades later when Will began to understand what he'd done. 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:51.280 I mean, as the baseball star of the Red Sox, 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:53.360 Ted Williams used to say he wanted to walk down 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:55.920 the street and have people pointed him and say, there 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:58.840 goes the greatest hitter who ever lived. Wild came to 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:01.480 realize that as he walked down the street, people would 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:03.080 point in him and say, there goes the guy who 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:09.080 scored a hundred points. Who who Who's who's cursive or 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.000 whose writing is on the famous piece of paper that 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:15.240 says hundred points. Well, so that's Harvey Pollock. So Harvey 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:17.840 was in the locker room and there was one photographer there, 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:21.280 actually there were two, one from the Harrisburg Paper, but 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:25.320 had other assignments, so he left after the first quarter. Well, 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:31.040 that left one off duty associated press photographer named Paul Vats. 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:34.080 He wasn't just any photographer. He had won a Pulitzer 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.080 Prize the year before for a photo he had taken 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:40.240 of the young President John Kennedy walking on a path. 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:44.000 Was with the former President Dwight Eisenhower at Camp David. 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:48.880 And uh so he's there with his ten year old son, 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.600 taking him there for as a gift for his tenth birthday. 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:53.800 And at the end of the third quarter, Bathist told 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:55.719 me he said to his son, you stay here I'm 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:57.719 going out in the car to get my camera. So 0:17:57.760 --> 0:17:59.919 he opens the trunk of his car, grabs his Cameron 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:02.560 comes in. He's got twenty shots and he's only got 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:05.200 one roll left. He wasn't planning to work that night, 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:08.680 so he plants himself under the basket and he gets 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:11.600 a few game photos, and then he goes in the 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.960 locker room afterwards and says to Harvey Pollock, Harvey, you 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:18.879 think we can get Will to pose? And Harvey, thinking fast, 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:21.840 said hey. Hef to Jim heffern In, one of the 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.400 film one of the two Philadelphia sports writers there that night, 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:26.159 you got a sheet of paper I can borrow? And 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:28.240 Heffernan gives him an eight and a half by eleven sheet, 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:32.359 and Harvey, in a brainstorm, writes one zero zero, gives 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:34.640 it to Will, and Will holds it up. Now that's 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:39.919 become maybe the most iconic basketball photo ever. Um and 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:44.439 it it's really those stage, completely staged. It's it's a 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.920 great photo because if you look on the wall behind Will, 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.520 you can see his trousers and a jacket just hanging 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.840 from hooks. He's on a solitary bench. He's sitting there, 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:57.840 his knees are up in his chest. He's his face 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:00.680 is covered with sweat. He's sort of smiling and cheapishly. 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.080 You can see one of the good luck rubber bands 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:08.439 he always wore at his wrist. It's it's that great moment. 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:11.320 It's the Dippers moment. It's the night Will scored a 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:13.640 hundred points. And that's why that photo I think we'll 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:17.560 live forever. He wore rubber bands on his wrists. Well, 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:21.440 he wore rubber bands two on his socks to keep 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:24.600 them from falling down during games. He it's something that 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:27.840 dated back to high school. And he kept two spares, 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:31.480 one on each wrist. So you had quitters. That's not 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:33.359 quitter when you pull up a sock and won't stay up. 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:36.159 Quitters back in the day would stay up, so he 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:39.240 needed That's that's amazing, That's that's really a marketing so 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.480 um so, yeah, it's it's the tree that fell in 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:49.360 the forest. Um uh so that how did that year 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:53.159 end up? Because again, it's it's just such a weird 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:59.560 moment that everybody remembers. Will average fifty, okay, and I 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:02.679 think only five rebounds and he had a hundred. But 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:06.639 it's like the complete opposite of now where the only 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:10.480 thing anybody remembers is who actually won the title. How 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:13.359 are the Warriors that year? Well, they were good, they 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:15.760 were you know, they won forty nine games. They were 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:19.000 forty nine and thirty one. They finished eleven games behind 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:21.440 the Celtics. They went into the postseason then lost again 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:25.760 to Bill Russell. Um. Uh. And you know, by the way, 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:28.399 there is one statistic from that season, Doug that people 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:31.160 don't know, and they should know because it may last 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:35.080 longer than the hundred point game and uh. And that 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:37.960 is that he averaged that season forty eight and a 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:41.200 half minutes played per game. Now the game, as you know, 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:44.119 it's forty eight minutes minutes. They were overtime games. There 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:47.520 was a triple overtime game and another overtime game. He 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:50.080 only missed eight minutes and thirty three seconds of the 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:53.920 entire season. That's how is that possible? Well, it's possible 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:56.679 because the referee, Norm Drucker threw him out of a 0:20:56.680 --> 0:20:59.720 game with eight minutes forty three seconds left, and so 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:03.280 he never came out of games. Before the season, he 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:06.879 told the new coach, the college legend Frank McGuire, a 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:10.440 dandy from Greenwich Village, to coach, you know you want 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:14.280 me to play. Um, I can't help this team sitting 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:16.119 on the bench. And besides, if you put me on 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:18.600 the bench and then bring me into the game back in, 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:20.840 it's gonna take me three minutes to get this body 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:24.520 warmed up. So he was like, okay, Wilty, you'll play 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:27.399 every every game. And so he did. You know you 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:30.640 think of time management of players, you know, keeping their 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:34.320 minutes down, sometimes not playing them at all. Just didn't 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:39.199 happen then, So he played all but eight minutes in 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:42.720 change of the entire season, never came out in eight 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:45.040 games other than that one time when he was thrown. 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:49.560 That's more mind blowing than anything I've ever heard. Yep, 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:54.399 ever I've ever heard. That's that's incredible. That's incredible. If 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:56.760 you get doing any NBA player today, you probably get 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:00.320 a lost it the players. I'm not playing Tuesday. It's 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.879 the best with my best, my dream to never come out. Um. 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:09.440 So he couldn't beat the Celtics. And my ley father 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:11.840 was a basketball coach. He had the opinion of Will 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:14.640 that he wasn't a winner, that he wasn't a big 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:19.440