NBA 75: Wilt Chamberlain achieved the extraordinary at No. 6, breaking milestones that might never be surpassed.

NBA 75: Wilt Chamberlain achieved the extraordinary at No. 6, breaking milestones that might never be surpassed.

(Note from the editor: Welcome back to NBA 75 on The Athletic. Ahead of the 2022–23 NBA season, which begins on October 17, we will be rerunning our list of the top 40 players each day. The initial publication of this work was on February 11, 2022.)

One hundred and twenty-four thousand.

That number, 4,124, is one of the most important ones related to Wilt Chamberlain’s amazing, exciting 63 years.

That is the estimated number of spectators who attended the NBA game between Chamberlain’s Philadelphia Warriors and the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962, at what was then the Hershey Sports Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Given the, let’s say, inventive methods in which attendance for games in the NBA, which was still in its infancy at the time, was frequently calculated, it is more likely that there were significantly less people present.

The game wasn’t seen on television. The only portion of the radio broadcast that survived was a blurry tape of Bill Campbell of WCAU’s fourth quarter. Only a few beat reporters from Philadelphia, which is located roughly 95 miles southeast of the city, traveled with the Knicks, proving how pointless the assignment was once thought to be. However, in those days, Hershey was a frequent stop on the NBA tour, when teams would barnstorm neighboring towns in an effort to garner local support.

After two hours, Chamberlain made the statement that perfectly summed up his lifetime of being associated with greatness. In NBA history, he became the first and only player to score 100 points in a single game.

Most people have forgotten that it happened in a game that ended with both teams continuously fouling one another: the Warriors to recover possession of the ball from the Knicks and give Chamberlain more opportunities to score, and the Knicks to prevent the Warriors from doing so. Once more, the game, like most of Chamberlain’s life, became an apocryphal tale since so few people attended and there was no video.

His skills were so exceptional that the following queries about them became legendary:

Was it because of his ability to do so from a standing start that he forced the NCAA to outlaw dunking free throws from the foul line?