10/30/2025
🏀On October 30, 1961 the Philadelphia Warriors star Wilt Chamberlain and new head coach Frank McGuire were both featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. In Chamberlain’s third season, the Warriors were coached by McGuire, the coach who had masterminded Wilt’s painful NCAA loss against the Tar Heels. In that year, Chamberlain set several all-time records which have never been threatened. In the 1962 season, he averaged 50.4 points and grabbed 25.7 rebounds per game. On March 2, 1962, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Wilt scored 100 points, shot 36 of 63 from the field, and made 28 of 32 free throws against the Knicks. Wilt‘s 4,029 regular-season points made him the only player to break the 4,000-point barrier; the only other player to break the 3,000-point barrier is Michael Jordan, with 3,041 points in the 1986–87 NBA season. Chamberlain once again broke the 2,000-rebound barrier with 2,052. Additionally, he was on the hardwood for an average of 48.53 minutes, playing 3,882 of his team's 3,890 minutes. Because Chamberlain played in overtime games, he averaged more minutes per game than the regulation 48; in fact, Wilt would have reached the 3,890-minute mark if he had not been ejected in one game after picking up a second technical foul with 8 minutes left to play. His extraordinary feats in the 1962 season were later subject of the book Wilt, 1962 by Gary M. Pomerantz (2005), who used Chamberlain as a metaphor for the uprising of Black America. In later years, Chamberlain was criticized for averaging 50 points, but not winning a title. In his defense, Warriors coach McGuire said "Wilt has been simply super-human", and pointed out that the Warriors lacked a consistent second scorer, a playmaker, and a second big man to take pressure off Chamberlain. The Warriors moved to San Francisco in 1962 and McGuire resigned rather than go west with the team.🏀
