|
October 28th When the basketball world gathered for the induction of the 2006 Hall of Fame class last month, perhaps the game's greatest player ever was again absent - as he has been for the past six inductions. Wilton Norman Chamberlain would have been 70 years old in August. Growing up, I was the most passionate fan the Los Angeles Lakers ever had. Announcer Chick Hearn was like a family member to me, since I spent so much time listening to him on the radio and TV. He was like that uncle who told all the great stories at the family gatherings. Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Gail Goodrich were my buddies, even though I had never met them. (Hearn, Baylor and West eventually did become real friends of mine). I lived and died with each horrific championship series loss to the hated Boston Celtics. However, the player who always mesmerized me wasn't a Laker, but a Warrior and a 76er, who was years away from becoming a member of my favorite team. Since I was born in Philadelphia, I had a natural curiosity about the city and its teams, even though we moved to Los Angeles when I was just turning three years old. It only took me one look at Wilt Chamberlain on the tube to forge an everlasting memory. On a Sunday NBA game of the Week the Big Dipper was dismantling the great Bill Russell. At halftime, Wilt had 28 more points and 8 more rebounds than Russell. Alas, like many of the Celtics-76er matchups, Boston had a lead it would never relinquish, even though Chamberlain would score more than 50 points and grab upwards to 30 rebounds. Wilt would routinely outplay Russell offensively and defensively but the Celtics would come out on top. Nevertheless, for a young boy infatuated with basketball, seeing a 7' 1" giant do the things Wilt did that day burned the image of number 13 into my brain forever. Little did I know that Chamberlain would eventually become a Laker and help lead them to their first title in Los Angeles, and that he, like Hearn, Baylor and West, would become a friend.  Wilt, here with HOF jockey Willie Shoemaker, had a certain style about him that made people like him. When you are 10 or 12 years old, if someone were to tell you that you'd become friends with the five professional athletes you idolized growing up, what would you have thought? Me, I'd have thought they were insane or drunk - or both. In my case, I would have been so very wrong. Baylor, West and Chamberlain were my basketball idols, Don Drysdale of the Dodgers my man in baseball, and Roman Gabriel of the Rams my gridiron hero. Through my exploits as a reporter and later a talk show host, I was fortunate enough to not only meet each of them, but to develop long-term friendships with them all. The last of that group, my own personal Holy Grail, was Wilt. I had actually met him once, during the 1988 NBA Finals, and he was nice enough, but our encounter didn't lead me to believe that we'd ever be exchanging regular phone calls. Fast forward to 1996 when I was hosting a sports talk show for a small Los Angeles area station, KWNK 670. When I say small, I'm not kidding. It was a tiny studio in the Fallbrook Shopping Mall in Woodland Hills, California, situated above a "Hot Dog on a Stick" franchise. On a particularly hot day - and Woodland Hills is always 10-15 degrees hotter than anywhere else in LA during the summer - we'd have visitors from the hot dog place come into the studio. No, not one of the pretty workers bringing us hot dogs and lemonades. Nope, our visitors had many legs and crawled up the wall. Wilt happened to be listening to the show one day and called the station to ask if he could come to our cockroach-infested studios to be a guest on my show. My producer knew that Wilt was the one interview that I wanted and had not yet gotten, so he set it up. Without telling me. Until the day before Wilt was booked. On a warm December morning in 1996, a 7' 1" Holy Grail ran up the steps of the Fallbrook Mall to create the highlight of my professional life. I didn't need any prep time, because as Wilt later told me "you know as much about me as I do!" Chamberlain stayed with me for three-and-a-half hours, taking listener calls, and discussing any subject I brought up, including, yes, the sex-with-20,000-women claim. In his 1991 book A View from Above Wilt BOASTED to have bedded 20,000 different women since he was 15 years old. At the time he was 55, so that meant he had sex with 1.2 women per day. (After all, he was the NBA's leading scorer for many years). People were appalled, stunned, shocked and humored by the robust assertion. The late Arthur Ashe came down hard on Chamberlain (and former Lakers' superstar Magic Johnson, who had contracted the HIV virus) writing that Wilt’s statements had caused "a certain amount of racial embarrassment." "African Americans have spent decades denying that we are sexual primitives by nature, as racists have argued since the days of slavery," Ashe wrote. "These two college-trained black men of international fame and immense personal wealth do their best to reinforce the stereotype." In typical Chamberlain style, he said that any criticism was welcome, and that he just wasn't bothered by it. Then he dropped the bombshell: He fabricated the number. "I've slept with more women than any man has a right to hope for," Wilt said that day at the mall. "I love women, and they find me attractive. I don't see anything wrong with that, do you? But as far as 20,000, well, it was a number I came up with to illustrate how much sex I had. It might not be quite20, 000." Then, with a wink and a smile, he leaned into the microphone and said, "then again, it might be more." Whatever the number, it's obvious that the Dipper, didn't lack female companionship. But it is ironic that once again, numbers are so controversial when it comes to Chamberlains's life - on or off the court. He's the most prolific offensive and defensive force in NBA history. Here are those numbers: - Games - 1,045
- Field Goal percentage - 540
- FT percentage - 511
- Rebounds - 23,924
- RPG - 22.9
- Assists - 4,643
- APG - 4.4
- Pts - 31,419
- PPG - 30.1
Honors: - Elected to Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (1978)
- NBA champion (1967, '72)
- NBA Finals MVP (1972)
- NBA MVP (1960, '66, '67, '68)
- All-NBA First Team (1960, '61, '62, '64, '66, '67, '68)
- Second Team ('63, '65, '72)
- All-Defensive First Team (1972, '73)
- Rookie of Year (1960)
- One of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History (1996)
|
Newswire 
