Pro Basketball: Wilt Talks Back

• Share

Anybody who stands 7 ft. l½ in. tall makes a pretty good target, and Wilt ("the Stilt") Chamberlain has taken his share of abuse from fans (who holler "goon" and "freak") and sportswriters (who call him a poor team player). Wilt's answers take up most of the space in the National Basketball Association's record book. He has scored as many as 100 points in a single night. He also has taken more shots at the basket (63), sunk more free throws (28) and collected more rebounds (55) in one game than anybody else. Last week against the Detroit Pistons, Wilt got the record he wanted most of all. Playing in his 523rd game, Chamberlain sank a free throw for the 20,881st point of his career and broke Bob Pet-tit's alltime N.B.A. scoring mark.

"This means more to me than anything," Wilt said afterward. Anything, that is, except winning—which the Philadelphia 76ers did, 149 to 123, and which they have been doing all season with such regularity that last week they trailed the World Champion Boston Celtics by only i game. With Wilt averaging 34.6 points and 24 rebounds a game, getting plenty of help from the likes of Hal Greer, Chet Walker and Bill Cunningham, Chamberlain may yet have the ultimate reply for his critics: an N.B.A. championship.