July 19, 1923: Alex Hannum Is Born

July 19, 1923, 100 years ago: Alexander Murray Hannum is born in Los Angeles. His may be the biggest name in basketball that you've never heard.

The forward from the University of Southern California debuted in the NBA in 1948. He played for the Oshkosh All-Stars in 1948-49, the Syracuse Nationals in 1949-50 and 1950-51, the original Baltimore Bullets in 1951-52, the Rochester Royals in 1952-53 and 1953-54, the Milwaukee Hawks in 1954-55, then moved with them to become the St. Louis Hawks in 1955-56, and briefly with the Fort Wayne Pistons in 1956, before returning to the Hawks in 1957.

In his last season, 1956-57, he got the St. Louis Hawks into the NBA Finals. Then he became their head coach, and led them to the 1958 NBA Championship -- still the only title the team now known as the Atlanta Hawks has ever won.

He left the Hawks because he wanted a 2-year contract from owner Ben Kerner, who wasn't willing to go beyond 1 year. For 2 years, he coached the Wichita Vickers of the National Industrial Basketball League. From 1960 to 1963, he was back in the NBA with the Syracuse Nationals.

In 1963-64, he coached the San Francisco Warriors (now the Golden State Warriors) to the NBA Western Conference title, but lost the Finals. He was named NBA Coach of the Year. In 1966-67, he coached the Philadelphia 76ers, with Wilt Chamberlain, and they started the season 41-3.

That is not a misprint: They won forty-one of their first forty-four games. They finished 68-13, the best record in NBA history to that point. And they won the NBA Championship. He was the 1st head coach to win NBA titles with 2 different teams, a feat since matched only by Phil Jackson and Pat Riley.

Wilt Chamberlain and Alex Hannum, 1967

He went back to the West Coast, and coached the Oakland Oaks, with Rick Barry, to the 1969 ABA Championship. He and Bill Sharman were the only coaches to win the title in the NBA and the ABA.

He has an even odder NBA/ABA distinction: He coached the NBA's San Diego Rockets in 1969-70 and 1970-71, then, before they could move to become the Houston Rockets, was hired by the ABA's Denver Rockets. He was fired in 1974, just as, in anticipation of their being brought into the NBA, who already had a Rockets, they changed their name to the Denver Nuggets. He never coached again, having a record of 649-564. He made the Playoffs in 11 out of 16 seasons, and won 3 league titles.

He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1998, with Chamberlain giving his presentment speech, and died on January 18, 2002, in San Diego, at the age of 78.

Note to those of you younger than I am: Chamberlain was the greatest basketball player who ever lived. Not Michael Jordan, not Kobe Bryant, not LeBron James.

May 10, 1973: The Knicks' Last Title & Wilt Chamberlain's Last Game

May 10, 1973, 50 years ago: The New York Knickerbockers beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 102-93, at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California, winning Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and taking the NBA Championship.

In this clincher, the Knicks used only 8 players: Earl Monroe scored 23 points, Bill Bradley 20, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed 18 each, Jerry Lucas 10, Phil Jackson 6, Dean Meminger 5, and Dave DeBusschere (a more defense-oriented player) 2.

For the Lakers: Gail Goodrich scored 28, Wilt Chamberlain 23 (and had 21 rebounds), Jim McMillan 19, Jerry West 12, Bill Bridges 9, Keith Erickson 2, and Happy Hairston, Mel Counts and Pat Riley didn't score any.

For the Knicks, this capped their greatest period ever: 1970 to 1973, 4 seasons, 3 trips to the Finals (all against the Lakers), 2 titles. Their only 2 titles.

Hail the champions: William "Red" Holzman, head coach; Eddie Donovan, general manager; 6, Tom Riker, center; 7, Dean "the Dream" Meminger, guard; 10, Walt "Clyde" Frazier, guard; 12, Dick Barnett, guard; 15 Earl "the Pearl" Monroe, guard; 17, Henry Bibby, guard; 18, Phil Jackson, forward; 19, Willis Reed, center, team Captain; 22, Dave "Double D" DeBusschere, forward; 23, Luther Rackley, center; 24, Bill Bradley, forward; 32, Jerry Lucas, forward; 40, John Gianelli, center; and 43, Harthorne Wingo, forward.

Frazier, Barnett, Reed, DeBusschere and Bradley also played for the Knicks on their 1969-70 title. Jackson was in the organization at that time, but missed the entire season due to injury.

Members of the 1970 Knicks who were not also 1973 Knicks were center Nate Bowman (Number 17), forwards Don May (5), Dave Stallworth (9), Bill Hosket (20) and Jazzy Cazzie Russell (33); and guards Mike Riordan (6) and John Warren (16).

Frazier, Barnett, Reed, DeBusschere and Bradley would have their uniform numbers retired by the Knicks. Holzman would be honored with a banner with the number 613 on it, for the number of games he won as Knicks coach. Frazier, Jackson, Reed, DeBusschere, Bradley, Lucas and Holzman would be elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Frazier, Reed, DeBusschere and Lucas would be elected to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players and its 75th Anniversary 75 Greatest Players -- though it should be noted that Lucas was elected for what he did with the Cincinnati Royals; he was a stabilizing veteran presence for the '73 Knicks.

Bibby was the father of later NBA All-Star Mike Bibby. Bradley was elected to 3 terms in the U.S. Senate, representing New Jersey, and ran for President in 2000.

And, yes, kids, that Phil Jackson, the one who would coach the Chicago Bulls to 6 titles and the Lakers to 5. He was a decent player, not a great one. As was Pat Riley, who played for the Lakers against the Knicks in those Finals, and would later coach the Lakers to 4 titles, the Knicks into a Finals, and the Miami Heat to a title.

After one more year, Reed, DeBusschere and Lucas all retired, and the Knicks began to fall apart. Pearl, obtained from the Baltimore Bullets (forerunner of the Washington Wizards) after the Bullets beat the Knicks in the '71 Eastern Conference Finals, was the last to remain, in 1980.

The clinching Game 5 was the last game for NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain. He signed on to be player-coach of the American Basketball Association's San Diego Conquistadors, but an injunction in a legal court kept him off the basketball court, enforcing the last year of his contract with the Lakers.

He sat out the 1973-74 season as a player, got the Conquistadors into the 1st Round of the ABA Playoffs, and then decided he was done with pro basketball. The greatest player in the sport's history -- yes, he was better than Michael Jordan, and he would have eaten LeBron James -- never drew another paycheck from a pro basketball team, in any capacity.

He would, however, have his uniform Number 13 retired by every team he played for: The University of Kansas (1956-58), the Harlem Globetrotters (1958-59), the Golden State Warriors (1959-65, including 1959-62 in Philadelphia), the Philadelphia 76ers (1965-68), and the Lakers (1968-73). And a statue of the West Philadelphia native stands outside the 76ers' Wells Fargo Center.

Jerry West and Oscar Robertson, like Reed, DeBusschere and Lucas, would hang on for one more year. Lew Alcindor had just recently changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Julius "Doctor J" Erving would soon move from the ABA's Virginia Squires to the Nets. Bill Walton was still at UCLA, winning the recent National Championship, the 7th straight for coach John Wooden, in the middle of an 88-game winning streak.

Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were in junior high school. Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley were in grade school. Shaquille O'Neal was a rather large baby. Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and LeBron James weren't born yet.

The Knicks went into decline, and, despite a brief revival in 1984, a stretch of contention in the 1990s that included Finals berths in 1994 and 1999, have become the most underachieving team in the NBA. In 2023, they are a Playoff team again, but don't yet look like title contenders.

Red Holzman died in 1998, Eddie Donovan in 2001, Dave DeBusschere in 2003, Dean Meminger in 2013, Luther Rackley in 2017, Harthorne Wingo in 2021, and Willis Reed just 50 days ago. The remaining '73 Knicks are still alive.

October 28, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis Is Resolved

Herbert Block (Herblock) cartoon in The Washington Post,

November 1, 1962: JFK says, "Let's get a lock for this thing."

October 28, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis is resolved, as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev

announces that he has ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba, as demanded by President John F. Kennedy.

In a secret deal between them, JFK agrees to the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. The fact that the Turkey part of the deal is not made public makes it look like the Soviets have backed down, rather than that the deal was a true compromise.

Much of the world thought that this was it, that World War III was assured, that the NFL and AFL games of this day might be the last sporting events that they'd ever see, or even that they would be prevented. They weren't, and the world moved on.

One event the world moved on to was the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, signed on July 26, 1963 by JFK, Khrushchev, and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere -- including above the Arctic Circle.

*

October 28, 1962 was a Sunday. The baseball season ended on October 16, as the New York Yankees beat the San Francisco Giants 1-0 in Game 7 of the World Series, the 1st Series to be between a team on the Atlantic Coast and a team on the Pacific Coast. (The Dodgers had already been in a World Series since their move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, in 1959, but their opponent was the Chicago White Sox, not a coastal team. The Dodgers won it.)

There was 1 NBA game played that day. The Cincinnati Royals beat the San Francisco Warriors, 131-130 at the Cincinnati Gardens. The Warriors were in their 1st season on the Coast, after playing in Philadelphia. They changed their name to the Golden State Warriors in 1971.

Wilt Chamberlain scored 53 points and grabbed 27 rebounds. Just another day at the office for the greatest basketball player who ever lived. But Oscar Robertson, himself a serious contender for that title, scored 36 to lead the team now named the Sacramento Kings to victory.

For the NHL, this was the "Original Six" era, and 4 of the 6 played. The New York Rangers lost to the Chicago Black Hawks, 5-3 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. The Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins did not play.

And there was football. In the NFL, at the original Yankee Stadium. Y.A. Tittle tied an NFL record with 7 touchdown passes, and the New York Giants beat the Washington Redskins 49-34.

Tittle is 1 of 8 NFL quarterbacks to have thrown 7 touchdown passes in a single game. Sid Luckman of the Chicago Bears did it against the Giants in 1943. Adrian Burk of the Philadelphia Eagles did it against the Redskins in 1954. Although it was in the AFL, the NFL counts George Blanda of the Houston Oilers doing it against the New York Titans (the Jets) in 1961. Joe Kapp of the Minnesota Vikings did it against the Baltimore Colts in 1969.

It was done twice in 2013, by Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos against the Baltimore Ravens, and by Nick Foles of the Philadelphia Eagles against the Oakland Raiders. In 2015, the Giants were victimized again, by Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints.

Also on October 28, 1962:

* The Green Bay Packers beat the Baltimore Colts, 17-6 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Johnny Unitas was the greatest quarterback of the era, but Vince Lombardi was the best coach and the best general manager, and had built the best team. From September 24, 1961 to September 13, 1964, the Packers went 38-5-1, including winning the 1961 and 1962 NFL Championship Games.

* The Cleveland Browns beat their arch-rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers, 41-14 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Dallas Cowboys, 28-24 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

* The Detroit Lions beat the Chicago Bears, 11-3 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.

* The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Minnesota Vikings, 31-21 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the Los Angeles Rams beat their arch-rivals, the San Francisco 49ers, 28-14 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco.

In the upstart American Football League:

* The New York Titans beat the San Diego Chargers, 23-3 at the Polo Grounds in New York. The Titans changed their name to the New York Jets the next year.

* The Boston Patriots beat the Oakland Raiders, 26-16 at Boston University Field. The stadium would be renamed Nickerson Field in 1964, and the team would be renamed the New England Patriots upon their move to suburban Foxborough, Massachusetts in 1971.

* The Dallas Texans beat the Houston Oilers, 31-7 at Jeppesen Stadium in Houston. The teams would meet again in the AFL Championship Game, and the Texans won. The next year, though, tired of trying to compete for attention with the NFL's Cowboys, they moved, becoming the Kansas City Chiefs.

* The Buffalo Bills beat the Denver Broncos, 45-38 at Bears Field in Denver. Bears Field would be expanded and turned into the original Mile High Stadium.

Bill Russell, 1934-2022

Bill Russell was not the greatest player in basketball history. He was the sport's greatest winner. Maybe any sport's greatest winner. And he was so much more than that.

William Felton Russell was born on February 12, 1934 in West Monroe, Louisiana. When he was 8 years old, his parents decided that living in the segregated South wasn't worth it, and that living in a housing project in Oakland, California was an improvement.

Russell attended McClymonds High School in West Oakland (named for a superintendent of the city's schools), at roughly the same time as Baseball Hall-of-Famer Frank Robinson, baseball All-Stars Curt Flood and Vada Pinson, Olympic sprinting champion Jim Hines, Congressman Ron Dellums. Before them, it was attended by Baseball Hall-of-Famer Ernie Lombardi. After them, it was attended by baseball player turned NFL referee Aaron Pointer and his sisters, the singing Pointer Sisters; basketball All-Stars Paul Silas and Antonio Davis, baseball player Lee Lacy, rapper Stanley Burrell a.k.a. MC Hammer, and actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.

He was nearly cut from the basketball team as a freshman, but head coach George Powles encouraged him and worked with him on fundamentals. Russell later said, "To play good defense... it was told back then that you had to stay flatfooted at all times to react quickly. When I started to jump to make defensive plays and to block shots, I was initially corrected, but I stuck with it, and it paid off."

To say the least. He was recruited by the University of San Francisco, a Catholic school in the bigger city across the Bay. Head coach Phil Woolpert not only welcomed black players such as Russell and K.C. Jones, but emphasized defense and patience, which suited Russell's game. UCLA coach John Wooden called him "the greatest defensive man I've ever seen."

In the 1954-55 season, the Dons began a 60-game winning streak that lasted into the 1956-57 season, after his graduation, and remains the 2nd-longest streak in men's college basketball history, surpassed only by the 88-game streak of Wooden's 1971-74 UCLA. It included the National Championships of 1955 and 1956. In 1955, Russell was named the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament. In 1956, it went to Hal Lear, a white player from Philadelphia's Temple University, which only finished 3rd, losing in the Semifinals to Iowa, which USF beat in the Final.

Like the man who would become his great rival in the NBA, Wilt Chamberlain, Russell was also an outstanding high-jumper on his university's track & field team, scissor-kicking his way (in the days before the Fosbury Flop) to a peak of 6 feet, 9 1/4 inches -- roughly his own height.

Abe Saperstein, the white owner of the all-black Harlem Globetrotters, wanted Russell, but would only speak with Woolpert. Knowing this, Russell flat-out refused to play for him. He did play for the U.S. Olympic team, along with his USF teammate K.C. Jones, and they won the Gold Medal in Melbourne, Australia. Since Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, the Olympics were held in November, and Russell wasn't able to join his professional team until December.

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With the 1st pick in the 1956 NBA Draft, the Boston Celtics -- having just completed their 1st 10 seasons, and not yet having appeared in an NBA Finals -- selected Tommy Heinsohn, forward from the nearby College of the Holy Cross, a player that Russell once held scoreless in a 1st half.

With the 2nd pick, the Rochester Royals selected Sihugo Green, a guard from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Green was a decent player, but hardly the kind of star you would expect to go as the 2nd pick overall.

With the 3rd pick, the St. Louis Hawks drafted Russell. It looked like the Hawks had gotten the best player of the 3. But later that day, the Hawks traded the rights to Russell to the Celtics, for center Ed Macauley and forward Cliff Hagan. The Hawks won just 1 title, and were forced to move out of St. Louis, to Atlanta, where they have been a perennial letdown. It is the biggest transactional blunder in the NBA's 76-year history.

What about the Royals? As the biggest star coming out of college basketball, Russell was already believed to be ready to demand big money, which most NBA team owners didn't have. Hawks owner Ben Kerner and Royals owner Les Harrison didn't have it. Celtics owner Walter Brown did, because he also owned his arena, the Boston Garden, and the other team that played there, the NHL's Boston Bruins.

What's more, Brown owned the Ice Capades. At the time, it was a bigger moneymaker than the NBA or the NHL. So was the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. So Brown made a deal with Harrison: Select somebody other than Russell, and I'll add Rochester to the Ice Capades' tour. It was an offer Harrison couldn't refuse. (And no heads -- human, horse, or otherwise -- were hurt in the process.)

It was a short-term fix for the Royals. But that's the way the NBA had to operate at the time. A year later, Harrison moved the Royals to Cincinnati. They won the NBA Championship in 1951. In the 71 years since, this franchise, now known as the Sacramento Kings, has never been back to the NBA Finals. But Harrison did what he had to do to stay in business, and that meant giving up a chance at a man who could have become one of the NBA's greatest players ever, and did. Russell asked Auerbach for $24,000, or $1,000 less than the team's best player, Bob Cousy, was making. He got it.

Under head coach Arnold "Red" Auerbach, the Celtics already had All-Stars Heinsohn, Cousy and Bill Sharman. With Russell, they marched to their 1st NBA Finals, against... the Hawks. Game 7 at the Boston Garden went to double overtime, and the Celtics won it, 125-123. In the 1958 Finals, Russell injured his ankle, and the Hawks won the title. They've never won the title again, and Russell would never lose another Finals.

The New York Yankees once won 5 straight World Series. The Montreal Canadiens once won 5 straight Stanley Cups. At the time, the NBA was a smaller league with fewer Playoff rounds. At one point, it had just 9 teams, and New York Knicks broadcaster Marv Albert said that the purpose of the regular season seemed to be to eliminate the Knicks from the Playoffs. And it wasn't getting some great athletes: For example, Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson had both played college basketball, but chose baseball instead. But the Celtics won 8 straight championships.

They beat the Minneapolis Lakers in 1959. They beat the Hawks again in 1960 and 1961. The Lakers moved to Los Angeles, and the Celtics beat them in 1962 and 1963. The Celtics beat the Philadelphia Warriors, with Wilt Chamberlain, in the Eastern Conference Finals in 1958, 1960 and 1962; then, with the Warriors having moved to San Francisco, beat them in the NBA Finals in 1964.

Earlier players like Cousy and Sharman retired. New players like Sam Jones and John Havlicek came in. The Celtics kept winning. Chamberlain was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Celtics beat them in the Conference Finals in 1965, 1966 and 1968, although the 76ers did beat the Celtics in 1967, ending their eight-peat en route to Chamberlain's 1st title.

All this while, Russell was named to the NBA All-Star Game 12 times, every year from 1958 to 1969 -- every season in the league, except his 1st. He was named the NBA's Most Valuable Player 5 times: In 1958, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1965.

In 1965, Chamberlain became the 1st NBA player with a contract that paid him $100,000 a year. Russell went to Auerbach, and asked for $100,001. He got it.

In 1966, Auerbach, retaining his title as general manager, appointed Russell as head coach. Aside from Fritz Pollard at the dawn of the NFL, Russell was now the 1st black head coach in any of North America's "Big Four" sports. He had certainly earned it: He was the ultimate team player. He didn't have the gaudy statistics of Chamberlain, but he made everyone on his team better.

He had also reminded his team of its responsibilities. He knew he wasn't the only black contributor. His college teammate K.C. Jones, the unrelated Sam Jones, Tom "Satch" Sanders, and, briefly, the man who would go on to become the 1st black head coach of an NCAA Champion, John Thompson, were keys to Celtic success.

In the 1958 off-season, Russell was a member of an NBA All-Star team that toured the U.S. They stopped in North Carolina, a segregated Southern State, and the team's black players were denied rooms in a white hotel. In 1961, the Celtics were scheduled to play a preseason game at the University of Kentucky's Memorial Coliseum. It would take until 1970 for Kentucky to play a black player, although Russell and his black teammates were allowed to play in the game. But they were refused service at a local restaurant. So they refused to play in the game, and flew home at their own expense rather than do so.

In 1967, he joined Jim Brown, UCLA basketball star Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), and other black athletes at the "Cleveland Summit" in support of Muhammad Ali, who had been convicted of draft evasion and stripped of the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

While the Celtics lost to the 76ers in the 1967 Conference Finals, they reversed that result in 1968, and they went on to beat the Lakers in the NBA Finals. In a calendar year that saw the assassination of Martin Luther King, James Brown have a Top 10 hit with "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)," The Supremes step away from the sequins and the glamour to have a Number 1 hit with "Love Child," Muhammad Ali continue his fight for reinstatement, the protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Olympics, and Abdul-Jabbar and Elvin Hayes of the University of Houston boycott the Olympics, a black head coach had won a World Championship. Sports Illustrated named him its Sportsman of the Year. (He was the 2nd black person to receive that honor, after Rafer Johnson in 1958.)

Russell had let it be known that the 1968-69 season would be his last as a player, retiring at age 35. Once again, the NBA Finals turned out to be Celtics vs. Lakers. The Lakers would have Game 7 at The Forum, outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

Jack Kent Cooke, builder of The Forum and owner of the Lakers, and also the NHL's Los Angeles Kings, had prepared the building for the Lakers' 1st World Championship since moving to Los Angeles in 1960. (They had previously won titles in Minneapolis in 1949, '50, '52, '53 and '54.) Balloons were suspended from the ceiling, in anticipation of the celebration.

There was good reason for this anticipation. The Lakers had 4 men on their roster who went on to the Basketball Hall of Fame: Guards Jerry West and Gail Goodrich, forward Elgin Baylor, and, acquired the previous off-season, center Chamberlain. Goodrich was an excellent passer. West was that, and the best shooter the game had ever seen, and a great defensive player. Baylor was the flashiest player in the league, with offensive moves no one had ever seen before. And Chamberlain was the greatest basketball player who ever lived. 

Due to the aging of the Celtics, for the 1st time, they went into an NBA Finals as an underdog. And, sure enough, the Lakers took the 1st 2 games in Inglewood. No one was really surprised when the Celtics took the next 2 at the Boston Garden. Or when the Lakers won Game 5 at home. Or when the Celtics won Game 6 at home. There was no way Bill Russell was going to lose his last game at the Boston Garden.

But no home team had ever lost an NBA Finals Game 7. Home teams were 8-0. And so, for Game 7, with every good reason to believe that it would happen, Cooke ordered the balloons, yellow with "World Champion Lakers" written in purple on them, suspended from the rafters of The Forum. In every seat, and all 17,568 were filled, a flyer was placed, stating, "When, not if, the Lakers win the title, balloons will be released from the rafters, the USC marching band will play 'Happy Days Are Here Again' and broadcaster Chick Hearn will interview Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain in that order."

Cooke was counting his chickens before they hatched. West, trying to get through a hamstring pull in Game 5, went out for a pre-game shoot-around, and saw the balloons, and yelled at Cooke. Russell saw them, and walked over to West, and said, "Those fucking balloons are staying up there."

Russell told his players to take advantage of West's injury by running the fast break every chance they get. And, early in the 4th quarter, Chamberlain, proud of the fact that he had never fouled out of a game, was assigned his 5th foul. One more, and he was out. He had to take it easy on defense. With 5 minutes left, and the Celtics leading 103-94, he injured his knee, and walked to the bench.

Laker coach Butch van Breda Kolff sent backup center Mel Counts in -- and with 2 minutes left, it was Boston 103, Los Angeles 102. Chamberlain told van Breda Kolff he was ready to go back in. VBK said, "We're doing fine without you." They were not doing fine without him: They were still behind. And so, in the most important two minutes of his coaching career, down by one point, Butch van Breda Kolff left the greatest player of all time on the bench. It remains the greatest coaching blunder in the history of the NBA.

The game ended Celtics 108, Lakers 106. Two points made the difference between the Lakers finally winning their 1st NBA Championship in Los Angeles, and letting the balloons come down, and the most humiliating defeat in NBA history.

Russell had retired with 13 seasons, 12 Finals berths, and 11 World Championships. Only the late Henri Richard of the Montreal Canadiens has matched this achievement of having more championship rings than he had fingers. Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees won 10 World Series. The record for NFL Championships is 7, held by Tom Brady. For men who have not been caught cheating, it's 6, by Fuzzy Thurston, Forrest Gregg and Herb Adderley.

Bob Ryan, former sports columnist for The Boston Globe, who probably knows more about basketball than anyone who's never played it or coached it, said in 2019, "If Bill Russell came back today with the same equipment and the same brainpower, the same person exactly as he was when he landed in the NBA in 1956, he'd be the best rebounder in the league. As an athlete, he was so far ahead of his time. He'd win three, four or five championships, but not 11 in 13 years, obviously." (Ryan had previously called the 1986 NBA Champion Celtics the best team in NBA history, with Russell's 1965 Champion Celtics 2nd.)

*

Just after graduating from USF in 1956, Russell married classmate Rose Swisher. Together, they had 3 children: Daughter Karen, and sons William Jr. and Jacob. They divorced in 1973. In 1977, he married Dorothy Anstett, Miss USA 1968. They divorced in 1980. In 1996, he married Marilyn Nault, and they stayed together until she died in 2009. He later married Jeannine Russell, and they were married until death did they part.

In 1970, The Sporting News named Bill Russell their Athlete of the Decade for the 1960s -- ahead of Ali, who had not yet been reinstated (that would come later in the year) or had his conviction overturned (that came in 1971). In 1972, he served as a pallbearer at Jackie Robinson's funeral, and the Celtics retired his Number 6. USF also retired it.

To this day, he is the athlete most connected with Number 6. Stan Musial had worn it with great distinction in baseball, and Al Kaline still was at that point. Later basketball stars Julius Erving and LeBron James would wear it in tribute to Russell. Perhaps internationally, English soccer legend Bobby Moore might be better known for wearing it. But in North America, 6 belongs to Russell.

He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1975, and as a coach in 2021. He is 1 of 5 men elected as both. The others: John Wooden, Lenny Wilkens, and his Celtic teammates Bill Sharman and Tom Heinsohn -- but not, as yet, his Celtic teammate K.C. Jones. (No women have yet been so honored. Dawn Staley is most likely to become the 1st.)

After 2 seasons as a broadcaster for ABC, a profession at which he was uncomfortable -- he said, "The most successful television is done in eight-second thoughts, and the things I know about basketball, motivation and people go deeper than that" -- Russell was named head coach of the Seattle SuperSonics. Although he enjoyed the Seattle area, and buying a house in Mercer Island where he would live the rest of his life, he found coaching without himself as a player considerably more challenging. After 4 seasons, making the Playoffs only once, he was let go. He coached once more, with the Sacramento Kings in the 1987-88 season.

Knicks Hall-of-Famer Bill Bradley, a graduate of Princeton University, said Russell "was the smartest player ever to play the game." He was named to the NBA's 25th, 50th and 75th Anniversary All-Time Teams. He, Cousy, George Mikan and Bob Pettit were the only players named to all 3 teams. (To be fair, the 25th Anniversary Team only had 12 players, while, for the other anniversaries, they named 50 and 75 "greatest players.")

As part of the league's 50th Anniversary celebrations, he did a joint interview with Chamberlain, with whom he had 8 Playoff series, winning 7. On the night in 1961 that Chamberlain set a still-standing record of 55 rebounds, it was against Russell -- but the Celtics beat the Warriors, anyway.

Their relationship had been tricky. They had dined with each other's families as players, but after Russell criticized Chamberlain over van Breda Kolff holding him out in 1969, things soured. But by the time of their 1996 joint interview, things had picked up a bit. Wilt revealed that Bill had taken to using their middle names, calling him on the phone and saying, "Hello, Norman? This is Felton."

When Chamberlain died in 1999, Russell spoke at his funeral. With that experience in mind, he acted as a peacemaker to end the feud between former Laker teammates Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.

In 2009, the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award was renamed the Bill Russell Award. Russell presented the 1st such award to Bryant, and didn't seem to care that Kobe was a Laker -- or a native of the Philadelphia area, home to the Celtics' other major rival. In 2011, he was a guest at the White House for a celebrity basketball game in honor of President Barack Obama's 50th birthday, and Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2013, he was honored with a statue at Boston's City Hall.

But the man who titled one of his autobiographies Memoirs of an Opinionated Man never stopped speaking his mind. He had a Twitter account, but didn't start using it until September 26, 2017. In solidarity with blackballed quarterback Colin Kaepernick, he used it to show himself down on one knee, while wearing his Medal of Freedom, and wrote, "Proud to take a knee, and to stand tall against social injustice." When Donald Trump continued to say that the gesture was unpatriotic, Russell, almost literally, doubled down.

Bill Russell, an American hero, died this morning, July 31, 2022, at his home in Mercer Island, Washington, after being unwell for a while. He was 88 years old.

Official statement from the Celtics' organization: "Bill Russell's DNA is woven through every element of the Celtics organization, from the relentless pursuit of excellence, to the celebration of team rewards over individual glory, to a commitment to social justice and civil rights off the court. Our thoughts are with his family as we mourn his passing and celebrate his enormous legacy in basketball, Boston, and beyond."

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver: "I cherished my friendship with Bill and was thrilled when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I often called him basketball's Babe Ruth for how he transcended time. Bill was the ultimate winner and consummate teammate, and his influence on the NBA will be felt forever."

Michael Jordan: "Bill Russell was a pioneer -- as a player, as a champion, as the NBA's first Black head coach and as an activist. He paved the way and set an example for every Black player who came into the league after him, including me. The world has lost a legend. My condolences to his family and may he rest in peace."

Magic Johnson: "Bill Russell was my idol. I looked up to him on the court and off. His success on the court was undeniable; he was dominate and great, winning 11 NBA championships. Off the court, Bill Russell paved the way for guys like me. He was one of the first athletes on the front line fighting for social justice, equity, equality, and civil rights. That’s why I admired and loved him so much. Over the course of our friendship, he always reminded me about making things better in the Black community. Despite all of his achievements, he was so humble, a gentle giant, a very intelligent man, and used his voice and platform to fight for Black people.

"Since the day we met, he mentored me and shared advice. Later in life, he never missed an opportunity to tell me how proud he was of me for what I was doing in Black America throughout the country. I will forever remember his cackling laugh, sense of humor and love for the game of basketball.

"This is a tremendous loss for the entire basketball world. Cookie and I are praying for Bill’s family and loved ones, our NBA family, and the entire basketball community."

Charles Barkley: "Bill Russell's passing is not just an NBA loss, it is a world loss. When your actions match your words on important issues, you are a great man, not just a great basketball player. The word 'hero' is tossed around a lot, but today it is perfect. RIP great man BR."

Stephen A. Smith: "An activist, a pioneer, a humanitarian. He made the world better for us all. #RIPCHAMPION"

Jon Stewart: "Bill Russell was one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. Once called out of the blue because he thought I looked sad on TV…best pep talk of my life. RIP"

Barack Obama: "Today, we lost a giant. As tall as Bill Russell stood, his legacy rises far higher—both as a player and as a person."

Some things are more important than winning. Bill Russell was great at those things, too.

March 2, 1962: Wilt Chamberlain Scores 100 Points

Note the time of this post: 1:00 AM, or "100 hours."

March 2, 1962, 60 years ago: The Philadelphia Warriors played the New York Knicks, in a "home game" for the Warriors at the Hershey Sports Arena.

It was not unusual for such games to be played by NBA teams in those days, in the hopes of building a regional fanbase. It might have worked better if the games had been on television. But there is no surviving TV broadcast of this game, and it might not have been on TV at all. There is no surviving film, either. Just a radio broadcast, with Bill Campbell on the microphone, and a few photographs.

Which is too bad, because this was the game in which the Warriors' Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points.

Wilton Norman Chamberlain was born on August 21, 1936 in Philadelphia. He was 6 feet even at age 10, and 6-foot-10 when he entered Overbrook High School in West Philadelphia. He eventually grew to 7-foot-1 and 1/16th inch. Or, as he later put it, "Kids, smoking is bad for you. I smoked a stogie when I was 14, and I haven't grown an inch since."

He also said that all the people who said, "My God, are you tall!" and "Lord, when are you going to stop growing?" and "Jesus, you are huge!" were balanced out by the people who said, "Holy shit!"

He wasn't the only pro basketball player produced by the Overbrook Rams (although they were the Panthers in his day): They also include Hal Lear, Wali Jones, Walt Hazzard, Wayne Hightower, 

Among their other celebrities: Baseball player Jeffrey Leonard, Super Bowl-winning New York Jets defensive back Johnny Sample, Philadelphia Eagles broadcaster Merrill Reese; doo-wop singers Rosetta Hightower (lead singer of The Orlons and Wayne's sister), Dee Dee Sharp and Len Barry; all the members of the soul group The Delfonics, Fresh Prince Will Smith, and Guion Bluford, the 1st black American astronaut.

Wilt excelled in track, in running, jumping and throwing events. But his combination of size, strength and speed had never been seen in basketball before. He broke Tom Gola's record to become Philadelphia's all-time high school basketball scoring leader, including 3 straight games in which he scored 74, 78 and 90 points. He led them to 3 straight Public League titles and 2 straight City Championships.

The University of Kansas, under head coach Forrest "Phog" Allen, had won the National Championship in 1952, lost the NCAA Final in 1953, and opened the Fieldhouse that would later bear Allen's name in 1955. Wilt went there, and led them to the NCAA Final in 1957, where they lost in triple overtime to North Carolina.

Until the 1970s, only Conference Champions and independents could enter the NCAA Tournament, and Kansas did not repeat as Big Eight Champions in 1958. After that junior year, Wilt left KU and signed with the Harlem Globetrotters. They paid him more than any NBA team would have, and he loved the traveling, going all over the world.

For the 1959-60 season, with his college class having graduated, he was eligible to play in the NBA, and the Philadelphia Warriors selected him with their territorial pick. He was now a teammate of Gola and Paul Arizin, both of whom went on to the Basketball Hall of Fame. And the Warriors' coach was the coach of the North Carolina team that had stopped him in the 1957 NCAA Final: Frank McGuire. McGuire knew Wilt was not a disciplinary problem, so he pretty much let Wilt play however he wanted.

As a result, Wilt practically re-wrote the NBA record book. In spite of this, the Warriors couldn't get past the Boston Celtics: Bill Russell wasn't quite as good a player as Wilt, but he was able to do something Wilt wasn't: He made his teammates better. The Warriors lost the Eastern Division Finals to the Celtics in 1960 and 1962, and lost the Division Semifinals to the Syracuse Nationals in 1961.

Wilt led the NBA in scoring in 1960 and 1961. Nobody could stop him. The league widened the lane, in the hopes that stopping him could be made easier. It didn't help. On November 24, 1960, at the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center, perhaps the most Wiltian game of all was played. Wilt grabbed 55 rebounds. In one game. Against Russell. He also scored 34 points. But the Celtics won the game, anyway.

In the 1961-62 season, he was averaging about 50 points a game. He had games of 73 and 78 points, to set new NBA records. In the All-Star Game, he scored 42, setting a record that stood until 2017, broken by Anthony Davis. On March 2, having not gotten any sleep the night before, he went out to Hershey with his Warrior teammates to play the Knicks.

  

*

This is what the world was like at the time of the Wilt 100 Game:

The National Basketball Association had just 9 teams, meaning 8 made the Playoffs. At the time, the Knicks were so bad (How bad were they?), Marv Albert, then a student at Syracuse University, and not far from being named their main radio announcer, said he was convinced that the regular season served only to eliminate the Knicks.

The Knicks, the Warriors, the Boston Celtics and the Syracuse Nationals were in the Eastern Division. The Western Division consisted of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Detroit Pistons, the Cincinnati Royals, the St. Louis Hawks, and... the Chicago Packers.

Yes, you read that right: The Chicago Packers. It was their 1st season. But no Chicago Bears fan wanted to pay to see a team called the Packers. For the 1962-63 season, their name was changed to the Chicago Zephyrs. Still, nobody wanted to watch them. So they moved, taking the name of a team that had folded in 1954: The Baltimore Bullets. Today, they are the Washington Wizards.

Despite having Wilt, the Warriors moved to San Francisco after the season. A year later, the Nationals moved to replace them, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers. The Hawks moved to Atlanta in 1968. The Royals became the Kansas City Kings in 1972, and the Sacramento Kings in 1985.

Despite their move, the Nationals' arena, the Onondaga County War Memorial, still stands, now known as the Upstate Medical University Arena. So does Cobo Hall, the home of the Pistons, now named Huntington Place. The other 7 NBA arenas from 1962 are gone: The old Madison Square Garden was demolished in 1968, the Kiel Auditorium in 1992, the Boston Garden in 1998, the International Amphitheatre in Chicago in 1999, the Philadelphia Civic Center in 2005, the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in 2016, and the Cincinnati Gardens in 2018.

The Commissioner of the NBA, still the only one the league had had since it was founded in 1946, was Maurice Podoloff. He was older than the sport itself: He was born somewhere in the Ukraine (he said records weren't kept) on August 18, 1890, and Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in Springfield, Massachusetts on December 21, 1891. (Podoloff, a lawyer who built and operated the New Haven Arena in Connecticut and also served as President of the American Hockey League, retired as NBA Commissioner in 1963, and lived until 1985.)

Wilt wasn't the only NBA star having a season for the ages: Oscar Robertson of the Royals averaged 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 11.4 assists. That's right: He averaged a triple-double for the season. Nobody knew that, though, until the NBA made it an official statistic for the 1979-80 season. Oddly, it was Wilt's friend, Harvey Pollack, the statistician for Philadelphia basketball teams from the founding of the league and the Warriors in 1946 until his death in 2015, who coined the term, and led the NBA to adopt it.

"The Big O" would be the only NBA player to average a triple-double for an entire season until 2017, when Russell Westbrook did it for the 1st time. Through the 2020-21 season, he's now done it 4 times. However, in only 1 of those 4 seasons did he top Robertson in points, in only 1 (a different one) did he top him in assists, and in none of them did he top him in rebounds.

Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Jim Calhoun, Willis Reed, David Stern and Bill Bradley were still in college. Rick Barry, Pat Riley, Walt Frazier, Phil Jackson, Elvin Hayes, Mike Krzyzewski, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Pete Maravich were in high school.

Dave Cowens and Gregg Popovich were 13 years old; Julius Erving was 12; Roy Williams was 11; Pat Summitt and Bill Walton were 9; Geno Auriemma was 7, and Moses Malone was about to turn 7; Bernard King and Larry Bird were 5; Magic Johnson was 2, Isiah Thomas and Dennis Rodman were 9 months old; and John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Karl Malone weren’t born yet.

Mets manager Buck Showalter was 5 years old, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau was 4, Devils coach Lindy Ruff was 2; and the other current New York Tri-State Area head coaches and managers weren't born yet.

The Celtics were the defending NBA Champions, the Chicago Black Hawks held the Stanley Cup, the Yankees were baseball's World Champions, the Green Bay Packers had won the NFL Championship, and the Houston Oilers had won the AFL Championship. That franchise, now known as the Tennessee Titans, hasn't gone as far as the rules allowed them to go since then. The Heavyweight Champion of the World was Floyd Patterson.

The Olympic Games have since been held 4 times each in America and Japan; 3 times in Canada; twice each in Austria, France, Russia, Korea and China; and once each in Mexico, Germany, Bosnia, Spain, Norway, Australia, Greece, Italy, Britain and Brazil. The World Cup has since been held twice each in Mexico and Germany; and once each in America, England, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Brazil and Russia.

Segregation was still in place in several States. There was no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Environmental Protection Agency, no OSHA, no Title IX. The ideas that a woman could legally obtain an abortion, or that people of the same gender could get married and be entitled to all the rights of a married couple, were ridiculous. But then, so was the idea that corporations were "people" and entitled to the rights thereof.

The President of the United States was John F. Kennedy. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry Truman, their wives, Herbert Hoover, and the widow of Franklin Delano Roosevelt were still alive.

Lyndon Johnson was Vice President. Richard Nixon was running for Governor of California. Gerald Ford was in the U.S. House of Representatives. Jimmy Carter was running for the State Senate in Georgia. Ronald Reagan was acting. George H.W. Bush was in the oil business in Texas, and his son George W. was in high school. So were Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham and Donald Trump. Joe Biden was in college. Jill Biden was 11 years old. Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Kamala Harris weren't born yet.

The Governor of the State of New York was Nelson Rockefeller, of the powerful oil and banking family. The Mayor of the City of New York was Robert F. Wagner Jr., son of one of the greatest U.S. Senators. The Governor of New Jersey was Richard J. Hughes. And, in the places in question, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was David L. Lawrence, and the Mayor of Philadelphia was James Tate.

The current holders of those offices? Kathy Hochul was 3 years old, Eric Adams was a year and a half, Phil Murphy was 4, Tom Wolf was 13, and Jim Kenney was 3.

There were still living veterans of America's Indian Wars and Canada's North-West Rebellion. There were still living players from that 1st basketball game in 1891.

The Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded, for the only time in its history, posthumously, to Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations, for his efforts to end civil wars in Africa. He had been killed in a plane crash the preceding September, and awarded the Prize in November.

The Prime Minister of Canada was Lester Pearson; and of Britain, Harold Macmillan. The monarch of both nations was Queen Elizabeth II -- that hasn't changed. The Pope was John XXIII. The current Pope, Francis, was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was 25, and had taken his Jesuit vows, although he had not yet been ordained as a priest. There have since been 12 Presidents of the United States, 12 Prime Ministers of Britain, and 6 Popes.

Major novels of 1962 included Another Country by James Baldwin, Lilies of the Field by William Barrett, Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie, King Rat by James Clavell, The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton, The Thin Red Line by James Jones, Big Sur by Jack Kerouac, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, the alternate-history story The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, and the last novel by William Faulkner, The Reivers.

For children, Madeleine L'Engle published A Wrinkle in Time, and Ezra Jack Keats published The Snowy Day. Definitely not for kids, Helen Gurley Brown published Sex and the Single Girl, Barbara Tuchman published The Guns of August, Milton Friedman published Capitalism and Freedom, and Edward Albee premiered his play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? For everybody, John Steinbeck published Travels With Charley: In Search of America, and Rachel Carson launched the modern environmental movement with Silent Spring.

Notable films in the late Winter of 1962 included Light in the Piazza, Walk on the Wild Side, a remake of State Fair, and the last of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's "Road Pictures," The Road to Hong Kong. Ian Fleming had just published the James Bond novel The Spy Who Loved Me, and Sean Connery was filming the 1st Bond film, Dr. No. The late George Reeves was the last live-action Superman, Robert Lowery the last live-action Batman, and Doctor Who was still just a concept.

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were still alive and writing. Gene Roddenberry was still writing for TV. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Stephen King were in high school. George R.R. Martin was in junior high. J.K. Rowling wasn't born yet.

The Number 1 song in America was "Duke of Earl" by Gene Chandler. Elvis Presley was about to premiere the film Follow That Dream, beginning his commercial downward spiral. The Beatles had begun to be managed by Brian Epstein. Bob Dylan was just getting started in the recording industry. Elton John was 15; Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen were 12; and Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince were all 3.

Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $9.31 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 4 cents, and a New York Subway ride 15 cents. The average price of a gallon of gas was 31 cents, a cup of coffee 34 cents, a McDonald's meal (cheeseburger -- no Big Mac yet -- fries and shake) 49 cents, a movie ticket 81 cents, a new car $2,500, and a new house $19,508. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed that day at 711.00.

The tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building. Telephone numbers were still based on "exchanges," based on the letters on a rotary dial. So a number that, today, would be (718) 293-6000 (this is the number for the Yankees' ticket office, so I’m not hurting anyone's privacy), would have been CYpress 3-6000. That would change: On May 11, 1962, all-number calling would begin.

There were no ZIP Codes, either. They ended up being based on the old system: The old New York Daily News Building, at 220 East 42nd Street, was "New York 17, NY"; it became "New York, NY 10017" starting on July 1, 1963.

Unless you were a teenager who needed to hear the day's biggest hits on "Top 40 Radio," television had completely replaced radio for entertainment. By this point, most American homes had at least 1 TV set. However, only about 1/3rd of those homes had a color set.

Photocopiers were still new. Credit cards were still a relatively new thing, and there were no automatic teller machines in America. There were artificial kidneys, but no artificial hearts. Transplanting a kidney was possible, but not a heart, lung or liver. There were no video games. Computers could take up the entire wall of a city building. Steve Jobs had just turned 7, while Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee were 6. Men had been launched into Earth orbit, but not past it. President Kennedy had set the goal of putting a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth by the end of the decade.

In the late Winter of 1962, President Kennedy announced an embargo against Cuba. The London-based Sunday Times became the 1st newspaper to print a color supplement. France granted Algeria its independence, ending a 7-year war. A cola mine explosion in West Germany killed nearly 300 people. Another 300 Germans died in a flood of the North Sea. The U.S. and the Soviet Union exchanged captured spies, Francis Gary Powers of U-2 plane fame for Rudolf Abel. Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev danced together for the 1st time. A coup in Burma resulted in a military ditctatorship.

In America, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy led a nationally-televised tour of the White House. John Glenn became the 1st American to be launched into Earth orbit. Two of the Flying Wallendas were killed when their "seven-person pyramid" collapsed during a performance in Detroit. Comedian Danny Thomas founded the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. The 1st annual 24 Hours of Daytona race was run. The 1st Kmart store opened in Garden City, Michigan. And the 1st Taco Bell restaurant opened in Downey, California.

Conductor Bruno Walter, and baseball pitcher George Mogridge, and football legend Walt Kiesling died. Garth Brooks, and Chris Chelios, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee were born.

That's what the world was like on March 2, 1962, when the 46-29 Philadelphia Warriors took on the 27-45 New York Knickerbockers at the Hershey Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was the Warriors' 3rd "home game" there that season.

*

Only 4,124 people paid to see the game in the 7,286-seat arena, built in 1936. The game was not televised, in either New York or Philadelphia. No film footage is known to exist. In other words, only those 4,124 people, plus the teams, plus the people working with them, plus the people otherwise working in the arena, ever saw this performance. The only known recording is a off an audiotape, of the 4th quarter, of Bill Campbell (who also broadcast for the Philadelphia Phillies and Eagles) on WCAU, 1210 on the AM dial (now WPHT).

Before the game, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Baltimore Colts, football teams played a charity basketball game. (The arena is 14 miles east of the State Capitol in Harrisburg, 96 miles west of Center City Philadelphia, and 81 miles north of downtown Baltimore.) It is suspected that more of the 4,124 people paid to see that than to see the Warriors take on the woeful Knicks.

At the end of the 1st quarter, the Warriors led 42-26, and Chamberlain had 23 points. Darrall Imhoff had helped the University of California win the 1959 National Championship, but he was now tasked with guarding Wilt for the Knicks. He was soon benched for getting into foul trouble, and asked the ref, "Why don't you just give the guy a hundred now, and we'll all go home?" Fine question to ask: Referees rarely gave Wilt the benefit of the doubt.

At the half, it was Warriors 79, Knicks 68. Wilt had added another 18 points, for 41. Teammate Guy Rodgers, formerly a star at Temple University, cited a nickname Wilt liked, "the Big Dipper," because he had to dip his head under some doorways (he hated the nickname "Wilt the Stilt"), or "Dippy" or "Dip" for short, and said, "Let's get the ball to Dip. Let's see how many he can get." McGuire had no problem with this.

When Wilt got to 50, Dave Zinkoff -- the public-address announcer for Philadelphia's NBA teams from the league's founding in 1946 until his death in 1985 -- began to shout the number, to get the small crowd going. And it worked. By the time the 3rd quarter ended, with the Warriors leading 125-106, and Wilt added 28 to make 69, the fans were chanting, "Give it to Wilt! Give it to Wilt! Give it to Wilt!"

With 7:51 left, Wilt got to 79, breaking his own record. Al Attles, who would later coach the Warriors to the 1975 NBA Championship, passed up an easy layup and passed to Wilt, so he could score points 88 and 89, with 5 minutes to go. Attles later said, "We wanted that Wilt got the record, because we all liked him."

The Knicks changed strategy, fouling any player but Wilt, to try to stop him from getting 100. He got to 96 with a fadeaway with 2:12 to go. He didn't dunk often, but he slammed one home for 98 with 1:19 left.

With less than a minute to go, Joe Ruklick passed to Rogers, who saw Wilt close to the basket, and passed to him for the chance at 99 and 100. But he missed. Ted Luckenbill got the rebound, and passed to Wilt, who put up another shot, and missed again. Luckenbill got another rebound, and passed to Ruklick. He had an easy layup, but sacrificed it to lob it to Wilt. With 46 seconds left, Wilt jumped and laid the ball in. (Some accounts say it was a dunk, but most say it was a layup.)

Wilt had 100. About 200 fans stormed the court. Ruklick, wanting to be a part of history, got through them to the scorer's table. He wanted it recorded for all time that he had the assist for Wilt's 99th and 100th points of the night.

It is widely believed -- and Wilt himself claimed -- that the remainder of the game was never played. The surviving recording proves that this wasn't true: It took 9 minutes to clear the court, and the last 46 seconds were played. Wilt did play them, but did not score again. It's just as well: 101, 102, 103 or 104 wouldn't have had the same historical oomph as the nice, round, even number of 100.

Final score: Warriors 169, Knicks 147. This would remain the highest-scoring game in NBA history for 21 years. That final score was then the highest in NBA history, and the combined total of 316 points would remain an NBA record for 21 years.

Everybody else on the Warriors: Al Attles scored 17, Paul Arizin 16, Tom Meschery 16, Guy Rodgers 11, York Larese 9; and, playing but not scoring, Ed Conlin, Joe Ruklick and Ted Luckenbill.

For the Knicks: Richie Guerin 39, Cleveland Buckner 33, Willie Naulls 31, Dave Budd 13, Donnie Butcher 10, Al Butler 8, Darrall Imhoff 7 and Johnny Green 6.

After the game, Harvey Pollack, the Warriors' statistician and publicist since day one, who would hold that job for the 76ers until his death in 2015, found him in the locker room, and gave him a piece of paper with the number 100 on it, figuring a photograph of him holding it would make for good publicity. Pollack was right.

Wilt set these records: Most points in a game, 100; most points in a half, 59; most field goals in a game, 36; most field goals in a half, 22; and, belying his infamous problems with shooting them, most free throws in a game, 28, in 32 attempts.

Think about that: Wilt scored 100 despite being fouled 16 times, an average of once every 3 minutes. He also scored 100 without the 3-point field goal being available to him: The NBA would not adopt it until 1979, 6 years after his last game. With no video, we'll never know how many he would have scored if the 3-pointer had been available to him.

That season, Wilt scored more points than any player ever has, 4,029, over 1,000 more than the next-best total, by Michael Jordan, the only other guy ever to get 3,000 in a season.

Wilt averaged 50.36 points per game. Today, when a player has a single 50-point game, the way Ja Morant got 52 for the Memphis Grizzlies the other day, it's a big deal. Wilt averaged over 50 a game that season. Even if you take out that 1 game, he still averaged 49.73. As the man himself said, "So, it was like doubling my average."

Wilt had games of 78 and 73 points that season. Take out those 2 games, and the 100-pointer, and he still averaged 49.06 points per game. He also had 2 games with 67, 2 with 65, 3 with 62, 3 with 61, and 2 with 60.

The previous record was 71. The highest total since has been 81 by Kobe Bryant in 2006, and that included 7 treys. So, under the old rules, it would have been 74, still the 3rd-highest ever, behind Wilt and... Wilt.

Despite Wilt's achievements, at the end of the 1961-62 season, the Warriors were sold, and moved across the continent. They would play from 1962 to 1971 as the San Francisco Warriors, then move across the Bay to Oakland, using the name Golden State Warriors. They returned to San Francisco in 2019, but have kept the Golden State name.

After 1 season without an NBA team, 1962-63, Philadelphia got the Syracuse Nationals to move into the Warriors' former home, the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center. They were renamed the Philadelphia 76ers. They moved into The Spectrum in 1967, and the arena now named the Wells Fargo Center in 1996. Wilt died in 1999, and a statue of him now stands outside the Wells Fargo Center.

The arena in question, built in 1936, still stands, under the name of the Hersheypark Arena. It was long the home of the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League, until 2002, when a new arena was built adjacent, now named the Giant Center after a supermarket chain.

Wilt would lead the Warriors to the NBA Finals in 1964, where they lost to the Celtics. In 1965, he was traded back to his hometown, to the 76ers. In 1966, his 7th season in the NBA, he led the league in scoring for the 7th straight year.

Finally, in 1966-67, he did not league the NBA in scoring. But the Sixers were better off. They won 41 of their 1st 44 games, finished 68-13 to set a new league record for wins in a season, embarrassed the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, and then beat, oddly enough, the Warriors in the Finals. Wilt finally had his title.

In 1968, he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, and he lived in L.A. for the rest of his life. The Lakers lost the Finals to the Celtics again in 1969, and to the Knicks in 1970. In 1971-72, they set a North American major league sports record that still stands with a 33-game winning streak. For the 2nd time, Wilt led a team that broke the NBA record for wins in a season, going 69-13. They beat the Knicks in the Finals. The next season, the Knicks beat the Lakers in the Finals, and Wilt retired.

Don't say Kobe. Don't say LeBron. Don't say Jordan. Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest basketball player of all time. He not only did to offensive stats in basketball what Babe Ruth did to them in baseball and Wayne Gretzky in hockey, he was the best defensive player, too. At the absolute least, 2nd in his time to Bill Russell.

Today, young fans like to say, "Wilt played against slow white guys." He also played against fast white guys. And fast black guys. In a league not watered down by expansion. Sure, the Knicks were bad, but there was no Donald Sterling-era Clippers, or pre-Jason Kidd Nets in the league.

Some young fans like to say, "Wilt played against plumbers." Guys who couldn't stay in shape all year long, because salaries were so low, they had to get off-season jobs. Well, if they were plumbers, then they brought their wrenches into the game, because Wilt got fouled like crazy, and it didn't stop him. Shaquille O'Neal whined about "Hack-a-Shaq." He didn't take half of what Wilt took, back when games weren't televised, and players knew they could get away with stuff that wouldn't get played on ESPN 5 times an hour. LeBron James? He would have faced the 1960s Celtics, with their thuggery, and run in stark terror.

At the 1997 All-Star Game, in Cleveland, the league's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players were introduced. In the locker room before the halftime introduction, Jordan was holding court, smoking a cigar, and bragging about how he was the greatest basketball player who ever lived.

Wilt had been hearing this for a few years, and he walked over to Jordan, and, very calmly, said, "Michael, my man, when you played, they changed the rules to make it easier for him. When I played, they changed the rules to make it harder for me. And it didn't work."

And he walked away. Dead silence in the room. Talk about "dropping the Mike."

Wilt died of heart trouble at his Los Angeles home on October 12, 1999. He was 63 years old.

UPDATE: On March 10, 2026, Bam Adebayo scored 83 for the Miami Heat in a win over the Washington Wizards. That is now the most since Wilt's 100. He had 7 3-pointers, so it would have been 76 under the rules Wilt played under; and he broke Wilt's record for most points on, and attempts on, free throws, raising it to 36 out of 43. After the game, he said, "Wilt, me, then Kobe. Sounds crazy."