This Day in Sports History

February 16, 1972 –A narrow 110-109 loss to the Phoenix Suns was mitigated to some extent for Wilt Chamberlain as he became the first player in NBA history to reach 30,000 points. In the same game, the Los Angeles Laker big man also gained an additional measure of satisfaction by erasing the old league record for rebounds held by Bill Russell, the Boston Celtic center who had continually stood between him and an NBA title while the 7 ft.-1-in. giant was with the Philadelphia Warriors and, later, the Philadelphia 76ers.

Less than three months later, Chamberlain was named Most Valuable Player of the NBA Championship Series as the Lakers defeated the New York Knicks in five games. It was the second title won by a Chamberlain-led team throughout his career.

Some critics scoffed at Chamberlain’s amazing achievements (including, of course, his 100-point game against the New York Knicks), pointing to his significant size advantage, particularly early in his career, over opponents, as well as the relative lack of success his teams achieved against the Russell-led Celtics (only one title for Chamberlain during that period). For that reason, he became very territorial about his achievements and anyone who threatened to eclipse them.

When Chamberlain began to be compared, sometimes unfavorably, to the next dominating big man who came along, Lew Alcindor (later known, of course, as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), “Wilt the Stilt” was quite annoyed and deprecated the younger player. (When his career came to an end, Kareem had some choices things to say about his older competitor in his memoir, Kareem.)

I remember that after Chamberlain’s death in 1999, Bill Russell appeared on Charlie Rose’s talk show and related a long-distance call that Wilt made in the past several years. A publication had just appeared asking if Dennis Rodman might be the best rebounder of all time. “Can you believe this?” an outraged Chamberlain yelled at his old rival, thinking—probably correctly—that the two of them could eat Rodman’s lunch.

Wilt claimed as much mastery of the bedroom as the basketball court. In his 1991 autobiography, A View From Above, he shocked the sports world with his assertion that he had slept with 20,000 women. (This almost matched his career record for rebounds.) The claim was silly and, because it was made at the time of Magic Johnson’s announcement that he had contracted the AIDS virus, viewed as irresponsible.

Chamberlain’s official cause of death was listed as congestive heart failure, but he had experienced tremendous weight loss only a few months before after dental surgery and had been suffering from the complications since then. (This worried me when I went in for similar surgery.)

Just think—nothing could take down the mightiest offensive force in basketball history but an errant tooth!