Wilt Chamberlain

This basketball player never married and was believed to have 20,000 relationships with women. He died of heart congestion on October 12, 1991, at the age of 63, after complaining of heart problems from very long time.

He co-wrote and published his autobiography ‘Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door’, in 1973.

‘A View from Above’, in 1991, was another autobiography by him, in which he gave an insight to her private life.

Wilt was born on August 21, 1936, in Philadelphia, to William Chamberlain, a welder, and Olivia Ruth Johnson, a homemaker. As a child he was never fond of basketball and was more of a track and field athlete.

However, as he grew up he developed a liking for the sport, because basketball was the mostly popular game in Philadelphia. He attended the Overbrook High School and since he was already more than 6 feet by then, his height gave him an advantage over others while playing basketball.

His college basketball debut was in 1956 in which he led, Jayhawks, his team to the NCAA finals the next year.

In 1958, he quit college to play professional basketball but was not allowed to do so as he had to complete his college to be qualified to play in NBA. So, he played with ‘Harlem Globetrotters’ who signed him up for $50,000.

His debut as a NBA player came on October 24, 1959, with the team Philadelphia Warriors in a game against the ‘Knicks’. In the game itself he scored an impressive 43 points and made 28 rebounds.

The season 1962 was historic because he became the first person in NBA to score 100 points in a game. By the end of the season he had an average of 50.4 points each game.

He continued playing for the Warriors in San Francisco, scoring an average of 37 points per game for season 1963-64.

In 1965, he returned to his hometown and joined the Philadelphia 76ers (Sixers), where he played against their arch rival, the Boston Celtics.

After being defeated in the previous season, the Sixers made a comeback in the 1967 NBA Playoffs, in which they won 4 out of 5 games. Chamberlain’s personal score was excellent as well instrumental in helping his team win.

He is the only player in NBA to have an average of 30 points and 20 rebounds IN each game in a season to his credit, apart from being the first player to score 100 points in a single game.

For all his achievements, he was inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978.

In 1996, he was named as one of the ‘50 Greatest Players in NBA History’.