Sports Moments in Time: Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-Point Night

Posted on March 02, 2010 by Dean Hybl

Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game on March 2, 1962.

Given his larger than life personality and talent, it is very possible that were he playing in today’s modern media era, Wilt Chamberlain would dwarf Kobe, LeBron, D-Wade, Shaq and the rest both on and off the court.

At 7-foot-1, Chamberlain was a scoring machine like no other. For much of his career, scoring as many as 50 or 60 points in a game wasn’t a “special” night, it was a routine. During the 1961-62 season, Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points per game and became the only NBA player to top 4,000 points in a season.

In fact, his career scoring average of 30.1 points is actually higher than the 2009-10 average of the NBA’s current leading scorer (LeBron James averaging 30.0).

It was 48 years ago today that Chamberlain had his finest offensive night and one that will certainly never be duplicated.

As a member of the Philadelphia Warriors, Chamberlain scored 100 points on March 2, 1962 against the New York Knicks in a game played at Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

The late season game wasn’t expected to be overly exciting and in fact there is no known video from the game. There is a radio broadcast that I have included below.

Chamberlain scored 41 points in the first half, which wasn’t overly exciting considering he had topped 60 points 17 times already during the season and 32 times in his three year NBA career.

However, Warriors coach Frank McGuire instructed his players to keep feeding Chamberlain the ball during the second half and the points started to pile up.

As he neared 100 points, the Knicks started fouling the other Warrior players to keep Chamberlain from getting the ball. The Warriors then started fouling the Knicks to slow down the game and give Chamberlain more chances.

He finally reached 100 points in the final minute and the game was halted for nine minutes as fans ran onto the court to celebrate Chamberlain’s milestone.

What made Chamberlain’s 100 point game possible was his uncanny free throw shooting for that game. Chamberlain converted 28 of 32 foul shots (.875), which is far greater than his career average of .511 from the line. He also connected on 36 of 63 field goal attempts in the 169-147 victory.

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