Western Pennsylvania is a lot like Western Kansas in that you’re usually driving through it to reach somewhere else. Not much to see or do, you know.
Still, you can always find a reason to stop, whether it’s to see the world’s largest prairie dog in Oakley, Kan., or to marvel at how chocolate is made in Hershey, Pa.
I’ve stopped in Hershey a couple of times and on each visit I’ve worshipped at the shrine. It’s a small arena adjacent, but not connected, to a huge Worlds of Fun-like amusement park.
Each time I peered inside the locked arena and wondered what it must have been like in there on March 2, 1962, when Wilt Chamberlain, then playing for the Philadelphia 76ers, scored an even 100 points against the New York Knicks.
If a basketball player scored 100 points today, the sports world would be in shock. It just doesn’t happen, especially in the NBA. In today’s defensive-minded pro game, it’s almost news when a TEAM scores more than 100 points. At the college level, too, it’s highly unlikely a player will ever score 100 points because any coach who would allow a player to shoot that much would violate the unspoken coaching commandment: Thou shalt not run it up.
Back in ’62, it was, of course, news when Chamberlain scored 100 points, but it wasn’t that big a deal because of the relativity factor. You see, Wilt had been posting huge scoring totals game after game.
For example, in the three games before Wilt reached the century mark, he had scored 67 against the Knicks in Philadelphia, 65 against the Hawks in St. Louis and 61 against the Packers in Chicago. Yes, the Chicago team was known as the Packers then.
Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points a game during that 1961-62 season in 80 games. Think of it. What a gargantuan feat. The highest NBA scoring average ever posted by Michael Jordan, the closest equivalent to a present-day Chamberlain, is 37.3.
Ask any kid today and he’ll tell you Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player who ever lived.
That’s just not the case.
Or as Lawrence entrepreneur Bob Billings, Chamberlain’s former Kansas teammate, pointed out: “Wilt has 56 NBA records. Do you know how many Michael Jordan has? Four. That’s right. Four.”
Billings roomed with Chamberlain on Kansas basketball road trips.
“It was chaotic in terms of the press,” Billings reflected, “but when you’re 18 or 19 you don’t think it’s any different than the way it should be.”
Certainly Billings had no idea he was rooming with a living legend, or that he would later become Chamberlain’s financial advisor and that they would remain friends forever. You don’t think about those things when you’re in college.
“It was coach (Dick) Harp’s idea to have us room together and I think it was because we had a lot of the same classes together and we studied together on the road quite a bit.”
One classroom incident remains in the forefront of Billings’ mind more than four decades later.
“It was a religion class Dale Turner taught,” Billings reflected. “One assignment we had was to memorize a lengthy bit of scripture. Wilt’s recitation was twice as long as necessary. He really had a great mind. He outshone everybody in that class.”
Together, Billings and Chamberlain studied math, English and geography, too.
“Wilt never missed a class and he always did his assignments,” Billings said. “He was a much better student than anyone would have believed.”
You might not believe, either, how much charity work Chamberlain does. He has even agreed to help YSI, a Lawrence youth group that maintains athletics facilities in the Wakarusa River valley southwest of town.
Soon YSI will be selling 7,000 copies of “Who’s Running the Asylum?” — one of Chamberlain’s handful of books — as a fund-raiser. A portion of the selling price will go to YSI and another chunk will go to Operation Smile, a Chamberlain-endorsed charity that provides health care for indigent children.
Wilt Chamberlain. Some people are one in a million. He’s one in a billion.
