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Sports » rec.sport.basketball.pro » Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes
| Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #994900] |
Thu, 04 May 2006 03:51 |
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I'm just posting some miscellaneous Wilt Chamberlain related quotes
(with sources) that I collected a few years ago . . . they may be of
some interest to Wilt fans and other NBA baksetball history buffs.
1. "What's unfortunate is that most people regard the great leapers
as being only the short guys who could dunk," said the 7-1 1/16 [Wilt
Chamberlain]. "My sergeant [vertical leap] was higher than [Michael
Jordan]'s. When I went to Kansas, they had a 12-foot basket in the gym,
because Dr. Phog Allen was advocating the 12-foot basket. I used to
dunk on that basket. It was an effort, but I could do it." [Source: The
Leaping Legends of Basketball, The Los Angeles Times; Feb 12, 1989;
Scott Ostler]
2. Wilt Chamberlain claims that his sergeant, during his prime, was
"46 to 48 inches, easy." [Source: The Leaping Legends of Basketball,
The Los Angeles Times; Feb 12, 1989; Scott Ostler]
3. Legends abound of the truly great leapers who could touch the top
of the board. Almost always the feat involves money-claims that the
player could grab a dollar bill off the top of the board, or could
pluck off a quarter and leave two dimes and a nickel change. Spencer
Haywood, for one, claims to have been to the top.
"I defy anyone to say they took change off the top of the
backboard," Chamberlain said. "I could. Someone would put a quarter up
and I'd snatch it down. I've heard stories about Jackie Jackson doing
it, but I've never seen anyone (but himself) come close."
Sonny Hill, a Philadelphia leaping legend of the '60s, backs
Wilt, saying, "The only man that's been to the top, that's Wilt. I
asked Kareem if he ever did, and he could jump a little bit. He told
me, `Sonny, no.' "
Nissalke tells of an informal leaping contest between second-year
man Kareem, who then was Lew Alcindor, and Milwaukee forward Don Smith,
who now is Zaid Abdul-Aziz. "They were trying to touch the top of the
board," Nissalke said. "They took about 10 jumps each. Kareem came the
closest. He was about a foot from the top."
Mitch Kupchak witnessed a similar jump-off among 6-4 David
Thompson, 6-9 Marvin Barnes and 7-4 Tom Burleson. "David came the
closest," Kupchak said. "He was six or eight inches away."
4. "When I was a freshman, I fooled around with shooting free
throws this way: For some reason, I thought you had to stay within the
top half of that free-throw circle, so I would step back to just inside
the top of the circle, take off from behind the line and dunk. They
outlawed that, but I wouldn't have done it in a game, anyway. I was a
good free throw shooter in college."
Actually he was a 62% free throw shooter, which is poor except in
comparison to his 51% as a pro. [Source: The Leaping Legends of
Basketball, The Los Angeles Times; Feb 12, 1989; Scott Ostler]
5. Of all his memories of Wilt Chamberlain, the one that stood
out for Larry Brown happened long after Chamberlain's professional
career had ended. On a summer day in the early 1980s, when Brown was
coaching at UCLA, Chamberlain showed up at Pauley Pavilion to take part
in one of the high-octane pickup games that the arena constantly
attracted.
"Magic Johnson used to run the games," Brown recalled Tuesday after
hearing that Chamberlain, his friend, had died at 63, "and he called a
couple of chintzy fouls and a goaltending on Wilt. "So Wilt said:
'There will be no more layups in this gym,' and he blocked every shot
after that. That's the truth, I saw it. He didn't let one [of
Johnson's] shots get to the rim."
Chamberlain would have been in his mid-40s at the time, and he remained
in top physical shape until recently. [Source: Giant Towered Over the
Rest, The Los Angeles Times; Oct 13, 1999; Larry Stewart]
6. Darrall Imhoff, who as a 6-foot-10 rookie center for the New
York Knicks had the misfortune of guarding Chamberlain during his
100-point game in 1962, said, "I spent 12 years in his armpits, and I
always carried that 100-point game on my shoulders.
"After I got my third foul, I said to one of the officials, Willy
Smith, 'Why don't you just give him 100 points and we'll all go home?'
Well, we did."
Two nights later, at Madison Square Garden, Chamberlain tried to go for
the century mark again. But Imhoff held him to 54 points. The fans gave
Imhoff a standing ovation.
"He was an amazing, strong man," Imhoff said. "I always said the
greatest record he ever held wasn't 100 points, but his 55 rebounds
against Bill Russell. Those two players changed the whole game of
basketball. The game just took an entire step up to the next level."
[Source: Giant Towered Over the Rest, The Los Angeles Times; Oct 13,
1999; Larry Stewart]
7. In Denver, Nugget Coach Dan Issel said, "As I grew up, Wilt the
Stilt was the player. Just the things he was able to do. I guess one
year they told him he couldn't make as much money as he wanted because
he couldn't pass the ball, so he went out and led the league in
assists.
"Watching Wilt, you always kind of got the idea he was just playing
with people. That he was on cruise control and still 10 times better
than anybody else that was playing at that time." [Source: Giant
Towered Over the Rest, The Los Angeles Times; Oct 13, 1999; Larry
Stewart]
8. Former NBA center and Chicago Bull coach Johnny "Red" Kerr, who
played part of one season in Philadelphia with Wilt and against him for
six-plus years, said, "He was the NBA. He was the guy on the top. Wilt
was the guy you talked about--he and Bill Russell. He was the most
dominating center--the best center to ever play in the NBA." [Source:
Giant Towered Over the Rest, The Los Angeles Times; Oct 13, 1999; Larry
Stewart]
9. In 1982, when he was 45 and Philadelphia 76er owner Harold Katz
was hot after him, the Houston Chronicle's George White asked Elvin
Hayes if Chamberlain could still play.
"Some things about Wilt, you never forgot," Hayes said. "He was such an
awesome physical specimen. To go up under Wilt Chamberlain, to be down
there and look up at him when he's towering up over you waiting to
dunk, was a terrifying picture. To see him poised up there, knowing he
was about to sweep down with that big jam . . . that must be the most
frightening sight in sports. The ball goes shooting through the net and
you better have your body covered up because he could really hurt
someone. I was scared. Everyone was scared when he got that look in his
eye, that don't-try-to-stop-this look that he got when he really wanted
it. . . .
"I think Russell realized there was no way he could have stopped Wilt
if he had been fully intent on making it a two-man game. No one who
ever put on a uniform could have done it. When I played him, I kept
this foremost in my mind: Above all, don't make him mad. Don't
embarrass him. You wanted to keep him quiet as long as possible."
[Source: Larger Than Life, The Los Angeles Times; Oct 13, 1999; Mark
Heisler]
10. Several years after Wilt stopped playing, he toyed with the idea
of a comeback. On the day he visited the Knicks' offices in Madison
Square Garden, he talked to Red Holzman, then strode out to the
elevator. When it opened, two deliverymen were struggling with a dolly
piled high with boxes of office supplies, mostly letterheads and
envelopes.
The load was so heavy, the elevator had stopped maybe four inches below
the floor level and now the deliverymen were huffing and puffing, but
they couldn't raise the dolly high enough to get it on the floor level.
After maybe two minutes of the deliverymen's huffing and puffing, Wilt,
his biceps bulging in a tank top, peered down at them and intoned,
"Gentlemen, maybe I can help." They stepped back, he stepped into the
elevator, grabbed each end of the rope slung under the dolly and
without much exertion, quickly lifted the dolly onto the floor level.
Looking up in awe, the deliverymen said, "Thank you." Wilt said,
"You're welcome." Wilt stepped into the elevator and rode down to the
street level as another witness followed the two deliverymen toward the
Knick offices and asked, "How much does all this weigh?" They quickly
surveyed the stack of big boxes of office supplies.
"Close to 600 pounds," one said. [Source: The Good Natured Giant
Wasn't Belligerent, Sports of the Times; Oct 13, 1999; Dave Anderson]
11. "I just remember he was dominating, a scoring machine,
unstoppable," Walt Frazier, the Knicks' Hall of Famer, said. "The guy
looked indestructible. He was such a physical specimen, I never thought
something like this would happen to him at 63.
"His legacy is comical. When you read about his records, it makes you
laugh. He has records that are just remarkable. I don't care if he was
10 feet tall, the things that he did. I think the season he averaged
50, he averaged almost 30 rebounds, something incredible like that."
[Source: Giants of Game Mourning Loss of Biggest Giant of All, The New
York Times; Oct 13, 1999; Mike Wise]
12. Years ago, teams could pass the ball over the backboard or take a
running start when attempting a foul shot. The former was outlawed
because Chamberlain would use the backboard as a screen, cherry-picking
passes and converting them into layups; the latter was banned after
Chamberlain took a running start, leapt from the foul line and dunked
the ball. Yes, Chamberlain dunked foul shots. And that was long before
Julius Erving or Brent Barry did it (while stepping on the line in the
process) in exhibitions. [Source: Until His Dying Day, Wilt was
Invincible, Associated Press; Oct 13, 1999; Chris Sheridan]
13. Connie Hawkins on Wilt: "The first time I met Wilt, we played in
a high school game in Brooklyn and he came to watch me play. That was
the first time I saw him, and everybody was talking about this guy,
Wilt Chamberlain, from Philly. I finally saw him and I couldn't believe
how tall the guy was. His nickname was "Wilt the Stilt," and his legs
were like the size of my body. When I first met him, I was in high
school and I was like 6-2 or 6-3, and he was the biggest man I'd ever
seen in my life. I couldn't believe how big he was. That was my first
experience.
"My first time playing against him was in the Rucker Tournament. We
used to play during the summer time all the time. I've told this story
before, about the team from Brooklyn playing the team from New York. I
was with the team from Brooklyn and Wilt used to play with the team
from New York.
"We had a guy by the name of Jackie Jackson who used to play on our
basketball team and he was one of those guys who could jump real high.
Well, Wilt used to always have this favorite shot where he would jump
and shoot high off the backboard and it would go in. So, we figured out
a play in the school yard. We said we were going to overplay him and
let him shoot that fade-away jump shot, Jackie would come from the
other side of the court and back then you could trap it on the
backboard. So we decided we were going to do that.
"It came down, they passed it into Wilt, I overplayed Wilt, he turned
around to shoot it, Jackie came from the other side and he went up and
blocked it. It was like two or three feet above the top of the basket
and he blocked it and everybody just went crazy. Everybody was yelling
and screaming and we were running around. Back then we didn't give high
fives, so I guess we were doing low fives. Everybody was slapping
hands. And this was in the school yards, where the projects were, and
people were just hollering and screaming and the place was packed. I
turned around and looked and Wilt was just staring at us like this
(Hawk glares). He called time out and everybody was still hollering and
screaming, but I was focused on Wilt. He just kept staring.
"After the time out was over with, Wilt came up with the next 30 shots
and they were nothing but dunk shots. He dunked it every way you could
go. In the school yards, they have the baskets with no nets on them.
And one time, he dunked the ball so hard, the ball went through the
basket, hit the ground and it went over the 15-foot fence. Somebody
went to go get the ball and when they brought the ball back, the basket
was still shaking. That's how strong this guy was. He was just a
dominating guy.
"It's really ironic. I think about it and I don't think people realize
just how great he really was. You hear guys talking about Michael
Jordan and all these folks, but they really refuse to accept the fact
that when you look at the record books, he has some records that will
never be broken. [Source: Thoughts on Wilt, NBA.com; 1999]
14. ... former Celtics guard K.C. Jones remembered his casual run-in
with Wilt.
"He stopped me dead in my tracks with his arm, hugged me and lifted me
off the floor with my feet dangling," Jones said. "It scared the hell
out of me. When I went to the free-throw line, my legs were still
shaking. Wilt was the strongest guy and best athlete ever to play the
game. [Source: Goliath's Wonderful Life, Hoop Magazine; May 1999;
Chris Ekstrand]
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| Re: Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #994901 ] |
Thu, 04 May 2006 05:26 |
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Chamberlain was an average basketball player and an all-around turd.
If he had been 6" shorter, he probably would not have been a starter
on a decent team. He would be an average player today. Bill Russell
was 10 times the player.
--
For email, use Usenet-20031220 [at] spamex.com
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| Re: Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #994902 ] |
Thu, 04 May 2006 05:47 |
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LurfysMa wrote:
> Chamberlain was an average basketball player and an all-around turd.
> If he had been 6" shorter, he probably would not have been a starter
> on a decent team. He would be an average player today. Bill Russell
> was 10 times the player.
>
>
LOL!!
you're just kicking up dust. it isnt 10 times, more like
only 1.08 times better.
- nate, who is a big Russell fan but kneauz Wilt wuz good.
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| Re: Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #994905 ] |
Thu, 04 May 2006 06:31 |
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in an internet full of idiots you rank right near the top of the heap.
I love the 6" shorter line, shows you REALLY know your basketball lol.
newsflash - every player in the history of basketball would be a lot
worse if they were 6" shorter. Shaq wouldn't be in the NBA, Magic
wouldn't have been in the NBA, Jordan wouldn't have been in the NBA.
Wilt was far better than Russell and every person in the league,
including Russell, knew it.
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| Re: Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #994907 ] |
Thu, 04 May 2006 07:09 |
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On Wed, 03 May 2006 23:47:35 -0400, Nate Smith
<greystone [at] net1plus.com> wrote:
>LurfysMa wrote:
>> Chamberlain was an average basketball player and an all-around turd.
>> If he had been 6" shorter, he probably would not have been a starter
>> on a decent team. He would be an average player today. Bill Russell
>> was 10 times the player.
>
> LOL!!
>
> you're just kicking up dust.
Actually, no.
> it isnt 10 times, more like, only 1.08 times better.
Well, maybe only 5x.
>- nate, who is a big Russell fan but kneauz Wilt wuz good.
I didn't say Wilt wasn't good. I said he was average. What he mostly
was, was big. Compared to players of similar size against equal
competition, he might not have been even average.
--
For email, use Usenet-20031220 [at] spamex.com
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| Re: Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #994908 ] |
Thu, 04 May 2006 07:18 |
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On 3 May 2006 21:31:52 -0700, "Sly" <slygrin [at] anonymous.to> wrote:
>in an internet full of idiots you rank right near the top of the heap.
Because I don't agree with you?
>I love the 6" shorter line, shows you REALLY know your basketball lol.
Correct, thanks.
>newsflash - every player in the history of basketball would be a lot
>worse if they were 6" shorter.
Ok, now try to pay attention. This is not a very complicated concept,
so I think you might be able to handle it if you really concentrate.
Ready? Here goes:
If Wilt were 6" shorter, he would not have been able to complete with
players of that height -- which is most of the NBA.
Here's another way to look at it: If Russell & Chamberlain were the
same height, Chamberlain would probably be held scoreless.
> Shaq wouldn't be in the NBA
Absolutely. Snaq is not even as good as Chamberlain.
> Magic wouldn't have been in the NBA
Not a fair comparison. Magic didn't have a 6" advantage over most of
his competitors like Wilt did. He might not have dominated, but he
would have been a player, for sure.
> Jordan wouldn't have been in the NBA.
Now who is the idiot?
>Wilt was far better than Russell and every person in the league,
>including Russell, knew it.
Wilt was bigger. Nothing more. He was dumber, though.
--
For email, use Usenet-20031220 [at] spamex.com
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| Re: Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #994909 ] |
Thu, 04 May 2006 11:46 |
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Użytkownik mark.yasuda [at] gmail.com napisał:
> 2. Wilt Chamberlain claims that his sergeant, during his prime, was
> "46 to 48 inches, easy." [Source: The Leaping Legends of Basketball,
> The Los Angeles Times; Feb 12, 1989; Scott Ostler]
Seargeant? I've never heard that name for this part of anatomy.
But no wonder women were crazy about him.
pzdr
TRad
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| Re: Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #994912 ] |
Fri, 05 May 2006 06:53 |
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<< Not a fair comparison. Magic didn't have a 6" advantage over most of
his competitors like Wilt did. He might not have dominated, but he
would have been a player, for sure. >>
now I think you may never have even a basketball game. Magic was a
6'8" PG (that means point guard, doubt you knew that much), that 6"
that he had over all the other PGs was what made him great. Without it
he would have been a poor shooting, below average quickness guard who
would have topped out as an average college player. But with the 6" he
was the best PG in history.
> Jordan wouldn't have been in the NBA.
<< Now who is the idiot? >>
still you. Jordan as a 6'0" SG ? start naming shooting guards who
even sit on the bench in the NBA at 6 feet tall. Iverson is the only
successful scoring guard of that size in the last 25 years and he is
quicker than anyone (and is allowed to carry the ball more than anyone
as well).
Wilt DOMINATED Rusell, just not as much as he dominated everyone else.
Russell was a great player. They faced each other an amazing 142 times
- Wilt AVERAGED 28.7 points and 28.7 rebounds in those games.
I feel bad for Lurfy
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| Re: Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #994918 ] |
Fri, 05 May 2006 14:21 |
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Sly wrote:
>
> Wilt DOMINATED Rusell, just not as much as he dominated everyone else.
> Russell was a great player. They faced each other an amazing 142 times
> - Wilt AVERAGED 28.7 points and 28.7 rebounds in those games.
>
> I feel bad for Lurfy
>
Russell DOMINATED Wilt in WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP. he figured
out that Wilt would be too occupied DOMINATING him in individual
stats that he wouldnt pay attention to the TEAM result. russell
just saw the game on a whole other level.
Lurfy was way beyond hyperbolic there, but i'll still take bill
over wilt in starting a team.
- nate
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| Re: Some Wilt Chamberlain related quotes [message #1005250 ] |
Sat, 06 May 2006 00:08 |
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On Fri, 05 May 2006 09:36:31 -0400, Nate Smith
<greystone [at] net1plus.com> wrote:
>Sly wrote:
>>
>> Wilt DOMINATED Rusell, just not as much as he dominated everyone else.
>> Russell was a great player. They faced each other an amazing 142 times
>> - Wilt AVERAGED 28.7 points and 28.7 rebounds in those games.
>>
>> I feel bad for Lurfy
>>
>
>
> Russell DOMINATED Wilt in WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP. he figured
> out that Wilt would be too occupied DOMINATING him in individual
> stats that he wouldnt pay attention to the TEAM result. russell
> just saw the game on a whole other level.
>
> Lurfy was way beyond hyperbolic there, but i'll still take bill
> over wilt in starting a team.
Hey, what's wrong with a little hyperbole (or even a lot). This is a
sports ng, no? Isn't every play the greatest ever seen? ;-)
--
For email, use Usenet-20031220 [at] spamex.com
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