Philadelphia 76ers: Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest NBA player of all-time
1. The Wilt Rules
When Chamberlain entered the NBA in 1959 with the Philadelphia Warriors, it was a much different league than we know now.
When the NBA started, the centers were plodders who were so slow the team would have to wait for them to get up court. It slowed the action down so much, the NBA had instituted a 24-second rule a few years before Chamberlain’s arrival.
Nothing like Wilt had been seen before. The Celtics’ Bill Russell was an athletic center but he was only 6-foot-10 and 215 pounds.
Chamberlain was 7-foot-1, 275 pounds and agile enough to have won the Big Eight Conference high jump championship while in college at Kansas.
Additionally, his basketball I.Q. was off the charts. He grew up in Philadelphia at a time when the Big Five was in its heyday and the city was a hotbed of great hoops.
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(Writer’s note: My father would talk about how Wilt and his Overbrook buddies would come to his neighborhood in North Philadelphia for pickup games).
Wilt was bigger, faster and stronger than anyone else. He was named not only the Rookie of the Year but All-Star Game MVP and League MVP for the 1959-60 season. And keep in mind in the previous year he had basically been goofing off. Instead of playing in college he traveled with the Harlem Globetrotters. Of course, Wilt did get used to winning a lot going against the Washington Generals.
His one weakness was foul shooting (a problem that would plague him his entire career).
So, instead of attempting a regular foul shot, he used to stand at the top of the circle, throw the ball against the backboard and then take off at the foul line and dunk it through the net.
The NBA stepped in and instituted the rule a shooter could not cross the foul line until the ball hit the rim.
The league also put in the offensive goaltending rule as Wilt would guide a teammate’s shot into the basket. One of the Warriors’ pet inbound plays was to lob a pass from the baseline over the backboard, where only Wilt could get it, and he would put in the easy basket until the league banned that as well.
Although there was already a three-second lane, it was widened from 12 to 16 feet to make Wilt have to set up shop a little farther away.