HERSHEY, Pa. — You drive down Chocolate Ave. and you look at the Hershey Kiss-shaped street lamps and in a minute you pull up to a Depression era arena that looks so much like a hangar you half expect to see World War II fighter jets flying out of it. You pull up to history, to a small-town Friday night when the NBA wasn’t much bigger than marbles, to a venue the league will never see again, and a feat it will never see again, either.
One hundred points? Did somebody really score 100 points, in a town made famous by a candy bar?
Take whatever NBA star you care to pick — Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Jeremy Lin. None of them will do what Wilton Norman Chamberlain did here 50 years ago Friday — which is make 36 field goals and 28 free throws in a pro basketball game, ringing up an unfathomable number against the Knicks, invoking change that could have measured on a Richter Scale, even if nobody knew it at the time, even if Chamberlain himself downplayed it.
“He never talked about that 100-point game so much,” said Barbara Lewis, 74, Chamberlain’s sister. “It’s almost as if he was embarrassed by it. He was much prouder of (the game when he had) 55 rebounds.”
Barbara Lewis is the ninth of 11 children, one after Wilt. She will be in her hometown of Philadelphia Friday night, when the Sixers commemorate the anniversary by playing the Warriors, and giving every fan a little piece of the Hershey court that Wilt ran and dunked and finger-rolled on.
Lewis paused and laughed and talked about what it would be be like if her brother had hit his 100 today, with tweets after each basket, and live blogs on his uncharacteristically good free-throw shooting (he missed just four of 32) and crawls and cut-ins after he had 41 points at the half, and 69 after three quarters.
In Hershey, there were 4,124 fans, no TV cameras, no photographers when the game started. The Warriors seldom played there; it was only their third home game there that season. A local 14-year-old named Kerry Ryman ran on the court and took the ball after Wilt hit 100 with under a minute to play, then ran up the steep hangar steps and all the way home.
“There was no thought about memorabilia,” Ryman said. “I just thought about getting a good basketball to play with.”
The Knicks drove down to Pennsylvania and back to New York to save on hotel money; the Warriors drove back to Philly through Amish country, their bus motoring by lantern-lit wagons.
“That’s the beauty and mystique of this that makes it Wilt’s special game,” Lewis said.
One hundred points? Did somebody really score 100 points, in a town made famous by a candy bar?
Take whatever NBA star you care to pick — Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Jeremy Lin. None of them will do what Wilton Norman Chamberlain did here 50 years ago Friday — which is make 36 field goals and 28 free throws in a pro basketball game, ringing up an unfathomable number against the Knicks, invoking change that could have measured on a Richter Scale, even if nobody knew it at the time, even if Chamberlain himself downplayed it.
“He never talked about that 100-point game so much,” said Barbara Lewis, 74, Chamberlain’s sister. “It’s almost as if he was embarrassed by it. He was much prouder of (the game when he had) 55 rebounds.”
Barbara Lewis is the ninth of 11 children, one after Wilt. She will be in her hometown of Philadelphia Friday night, when the Sixers commemorate the anniversary by playing the Warriors, and giving every fan a little piece of the Hershey court that Wilt ran and dunked and finger-rolled on.
Lewis paused and laughed and talked about what it would be be like if her brother had hit his 100 today, with tweets after each basket, and live blogs on his uncharacteristically good free-throw shooting (he missed just four of 32) and crawls and cut-ins after he had 41 points at the half, and 69 after three quarters.
In Hershey, there were 4,124 fans, no TV cameras, no photographers when the game started. The Warriors seldom played there; it was only their third home game there that season. A local 14-year-old named Kerry Ryman ran on the court and took the ball after Wilt hit 100 with under a minute to play, then ran up the steep hangar steps and all the way home.
“There was no thought about memorabilia,” Ryman said. “I just thought about getting a good basketball to play with.”
The Knicks drove down to Pennsylvania and back to New York to save on hotel money; the Warriors drove back to Philly through Amish country, their bus motoring by lantern-lit wagons.
“That’s the beauty and mystique of this that makes it Wilt’s special game,” Lewis said.
