The “Big Dipper” is a unique player whose strength, agility, and talent altered the course of the game.
He was the greatest offensive force in basketball history, an unstoppable force. When asked to rank the greatest basketball players of all time, the majority of enthusiasts and fans would rank Wilt Chamberlain at the top of the list. Despite double and triple teams and relentless fouling techniques from the opposition, Chamberlain looked to be able to score and rebound at whim, dominating the game like few athletes in any sport ever did.
“The books don’t lie,” Oscar Robertson stated in the Philadelphia Daily News in response to the question of whether Chamberlain was the greatest of all time. There are a lot of records about Chamberlain’s accomplishments. In a single season, he became the lone NBA player to score 4,000 points. In an NBA game, he broke the marks for most points (100), most field goals in a row (18), and most rebounds (55). The 50.4 points per game he averaged in the 1961–62 season, and if that wasn’t staggering enough, then maybe the 48.5 minutes he averaged in that same season, were.
With 31,419 career points, he retired as the all-time leader. Later, Dirk Nowitzki, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jordan all overtook him. With 23,924 rebounds, he leads the pack. For seven years in a row, he was the NBA’s top scorer. For 11 of his 14 seasons, he was the best rebounder in the league. And just to show that he wasn’t a self-centered player, in 1967–1968 he recorded the highest assist total in the NBA.
However, his scoring records are the most remarkable numbers; Most games with 50 or more points, 118; Most games in a row with 40 or more points, 14; Most games in a row with 30 or more points, 65; Most games in a row with 20 or more points, 126; 37.6 points per game is the highest rookie scoring average, while a season’s highest field goal percentage is.727. And the guy in second place is well behind with several of these. His name could be the standard answer whenever a query about an NBA scoring record comes up because it occurs so frequently in the books of scoring records.
Throughout his career, his supremacy led to numerous revisions in the regulations. The lanes were widened, offensive goaltending was implemented, and the regulations pertaining to inbounding the ball and making free throws were amended (Chamberlain would leap with the ball from behind the foul line to drop the ball in the basket).
No other player in NBA history has had such an influence or given rise to so many tales. With the seemingly unstoppable influx of more talented players, it’s hard to fathom what it was like to play against Chamberlain, who was not only taller and stronger than nearly everyone he faced, but also incredibly coordinated. Standing 7-1 and reported at 275 pounds, Chamberlain was a track and field hero in high school and college. However, as his career proceeded, he filled out and gained more muscle, finally playing at over 300 pounds.
Chamberlain had extraordinary power. Former NBA executive, coach, general manager, and player Rod Thorn recalls a brawl in which Chamberlain reached down and lifted a teammate out of a heap of corpses, treating him like a feathered creature. The dude weighed 220 pounds and was 6-foot-8.
