It was 1974. I was walking down 2nd street in Santa Monica, California. And there he was, the biggest human being I'd ever seen up close. It was Wilt Chamberlain, on the sidewalk, striding in my direction.
Oh, I'd seen Wilt many times on TV, especially out in LA. Channel 11 carried the Laker's games, and Chick Hearn loved to use the phrase: "There's another Dipper dunker!" whenever Wilt slammed home a basket. Many years earlier, I watched my first NBA game on TV just to get a look at this phenomenon in an oversized Philadelphia Warriors' uniform.
Chamberlain left the University of Kansas after his junior year. He had been the star of one of the best college teams in the land. Kansas went all the way to the NCAA finals, losing by one point in a low-scoring, triple-overtime contest to North Carolina. The Tarheels won by holding the ball, keeping it out of Wilt's hands. He expected that every team the following year would use stall tactics. That wasn't Wilt's idea of basketball, so he signed a one-year contract with the Harlem Globetrotters.
That was probably his most lucrative offer. In that era, the NBA struggled. It had teams in places like Syracuse and Rochester, but none in Chicago or Los Angeles. There was no franchise west of Minneapolis or south of Cincinnati. Often, the semi-pro teams, like the Bartlesville Oilers, a promotional effort for Phillips 66, were better.
The NBA had limited television exposure, and the pro game of the 50's was pretty dull. Each team had a big man in the middle, standing there waving his arms to force the other team outside where the two-handed push shot was the greatest scoring threat. George Mikan was the best of the goon squad. He wore glasses, with Coke-bottle lenses, taped to his temples and took a looping hook shot. They took fowl shots underhanded. The jump shot was an innovation. Ball handlers, like Oscar Robertson and Bob Cousy, furnished the only excitement.
The NBA needed help. When Philadelphia hired Chamberlain away from the Globetrotters, the Warriors thought they had another defensive star. What they and the league got was a bonanza. Wilt was a big man who could run, jump, pass, rebound, and score more points than the other team. He dunked the ball -- no one had seen that before. Stand him up inside, and he killed you with his fade away jump shot. Soon, the NBA and Wilt Chamberlain were on network TV, and the league was expanding to big cities coast-to-coast.
Although Wilt was the most dominating player in that or any sport, he had his great nemesis -- the Boston Celtics. They were the finest basketball team of the era, perhaps of all time. Every Celtic was memorable, but today I can't recall a single Philadelphia Warrior other than Wilt. His greatest frustration was that as gifted a player as he was, by himself he couldn't beat the Celtics. Nevertheless, the Boston-Philadelphia contests drew TV audiences in the downtime between football and baseball seasons, so the NBA began to prosper.
I should have said something that California afternoon, but all I could do was gawk like a kid as Wilt Chamberlain walked by. I watched as some guy in a cheap suit struck up a conversation with him. Wilt politely excused himself, crossed the street in about 3 steps, and got behind the wheel of a gold Rolls Royce convertible. I swear that his head extended about 6 inches above the windshield.