When I Met the Best Basketball Player...Ever!

The date was January 17, 1998. The place was Allen Fieldhouse on the campus of the University of Kansas. A sellout crowd of  more than 16,000 rabid Jayhawk fans were on hand for two occasions. First, was the annual Sunflower Showdown between Kansas and K-State. The second came at halftime when KU held a special ceremony to welcome Wilt "The Stilt" Chamberlain back to his alma mater to retire his jersey and hang it in the rafters.

It was an emotional and wonderful homecoming for Chamberlain, who grew up in Philadelphia but wanted to leave the East Coast to avoid his racially-charged surroundings. He didn't think basketball out West was very strong and wanted nothing to do with the segregation in the South, so he chose Kansas. Though there were racial tensions there as well, he helped changed thinking and was known to attend establishments that would not serve black people. Wilt simply sat there until he was served. 

Still, he didn't exactly know how his return to Lawrence would go in 1998. Wearing his KU letter jacket, the atmosphere was electric. At halftime, the crowd gave him a thunderously loud, appreciative and lengthy ovation. As I sat on press row as sports director for ABC affiliate KTKA-TV (Topeka, Kansas), you could feel the emotion and electricity surge through everyone who witnessed it. School officials presented him with a piece of the original Allen Fieldhouse floor and stood with him as his #13 was unveiled high above the playing surface.

"I'm humbled and deeply honored," Wilt told the roaring crowd. "I'm a Jayhawk and I know now why there is so much tradition here and why so many wonderful things have come from here. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

Today, the argument about who is the greatest basketball player ever is often centered on Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Personally, I think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell and Larry Bird deserve consideration. However, in my mind there has never been a player as great as Chamberlain. Yes, greater than Jordan, James and all others. The fact is nobody dominated the game like Wilt did - nobody!

His statistics speak for themselves. In 1955, Wilt suited up for the Jayhawk freshman team in the annual freshman versus varsity game. Back then, freshmen couldn't play until their sophomore seasons. Anyway, Chamberlain lit up the varsity by scoring 42 points and pulling down 29 rebounds in a victory. He was also a standout on the KU track team. He set the Big Seven Conference freshman indoor record in high jump, placed fourth at the Kansas Relays in the triple jump and placed third in the shot put. Oh wait, we were talking basketball, weren't we?

In his Jayhawk debut the first game of his sophomore season, Wilt scored 52 points - still a single-game KU record to this day - and had 31 rebounds. Over his two-year career in Lawrence, Chamberlain scored 1,433 points (29.9 per game) and had 877 rebounds (18.3 per game.). He was named a two-time all-American and led his team to the 1957 national championship game, which KU lost in heart-breaking fashion in triple overtime.

Wilt left college after his junior season to play with the Harlem Globetrotters. Then, he played 14 years in the National Basketball Association where he was a 13-time all-star, 11-time rebounding leader, nine-time field goal percentage leader, seven-time scoring champion, four-time most valuable player and two-time champion. Chamberlain's career featured 31,419 points (30.1 per game), 23,924 rebounds (22.9 per game) and 4,643 assists (4.4 per game). At one time, he held at least 72 NBA records including the highest single-season scoring average at 50.4 points per game. Toward the end of his career, Wilt blocked what many called the unblockable shot - and he did it twice in a matter of seconds. A young Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) launched an right-handed sky hook and Chamberlain blocked it. He got the ball back, went to the left hand for another sky hook and again had it rejected. Wilt is also the only player to score 100 points per game and his single-game best for rebounding was 55. And through it all, he NEVER FOULED OUT FROM ANY GAME. Not once!

Wilt's athletic agility and abilities changed the rules. While playing against Kansas State, he was awarded a free throw so he started beyond the top of the circle, ran toward the free throw line, leaped without crossing it and dunked the basketball. After the season, K-State Coach Tex Winter attended the NCAA Convention calling for a rule change. The NCAA, and later the NBA, agreed, ruling players had to keep both feet on the ground while taking a foul shot. It doesn't stop there. Teammates under the KU basket used to lob the inbounds pass over the top of the backboard. Chamberland would leap, catch it and slam it home. That too was outlawed. The NCAA also widened the free throw lane from 12 to 16 feet to make it more fair for opponents and outlawed offensive goaltending, all because of him.

Wilt retired from the NBA at the early age of 36. In that final season, he still led the league with more than 18 rebounds a game. He then transitioned into a brief professional volleyball career. Imagine being on the front line and looking across the net to see that!

Returning to the retirement ceremony in Lawrence, it was late in the game when an announcement came over the public address system that Wilt would stay after the game as long as it took to sign autographs for everyone who wanted one. The crowd roared and thousands took him up on it. Once the game ended, Chamberlain sat behind a table courtside to greet the public. Among the masses, I had my chance to talk with him along with my cameraman. As the autographs continued, I asked if we could chat as he signed. He gladly obliged and said he had been away from KU for too long. He expressed how he was deeply moved and later told a former teammate and friend that it was "greatest single day of my life."

Wilt talked to locals and signed autographs into the early evening at Allen Fieldhouse for three hours and 18 minutes.

When I met Wilt that afternoon at Allen Fieldhouse, he was 62 years of age. But standing 7-feet-one-inch and weighing 275 pounds, he still looked fit and trim. Shoot, he looked like he could still go out on the court and dominate. Amazingly, less than two years later, he passed away from heart failure. 

Wilt Chamberlain, the greatest basketball player of all-time!

'Foggy' Memories of My Birthplace

"Randy and I are down Louisiana way."

That text popped in a family thread in January. My sister and her husband were on their way to New Orleans to set up their family business at an expo for the weekend. 

"New Orleans?" was my response.

Then my brother, Alan, asked if they were going to stop my our old house. The response was "no." That was until Alan chimed in that the house was just off of I-10 and they would be driving right by it. So, Amy stopped by and then came the posting of photo after photo. First was the home where Amy and I were born.

Then we started swapping memories including playing in the streets that used to flood every time it rained. You see, New Orleans is actually below sea level so it took a while for the water to drain after a storm. While I don't remember a ton about my birth city because we moved away when I was six years old or so, I do remember "swimming" in the street. Mom was not a fan of that. And she definitely did not like it when when the "fog man" came down the street. 

New Orleans is a mosquito infested kind of place. I don't remember how often the fog man and his truck that sprayed mosquito-killing insecticides rolled through the neighborhood, but it was pretty often. And we were dumb kids. We would run behind it, play in it and ride out bikes through it. Alan texted that it was most certainly some kind of DDT-laced stuff and sent this link, which looks pretty darn and dangerously accurate. 

Then Alan forwarded "a few blasts from the past," a series of throwback photos from the early to mid-1960s. The memories are a bit "foggy," but they still exist. And that's a great thing.

Our clubhouse, which Dad built for us boys. Funny thing is I remember it being so sleek, a great place to play and home to our guinea pig, Tiger (see photo below), who lived beneath it.

It never snowed in Louisiana but the one time it did, we needed about every bit of it in our yard to make this snowman.

A Mark Holyoak classic family photo of me cracking Alan in the head with the handle of a toy gun.

Kerry helping hold me upright. I wasn't even two years old when we were outside of church and a couple of teenage boys chasing each other plowed right over the top of me, breaking my left leg.

Lexi: Larger Than Life

Wait, was that Lexi?

I drive to work the same way and about the same speed everyday - 75 miles an hour on the interstate the entire way. And in the winter months, it's entirely in the dark. That's why this particular dark morning was a little surprising. 

As I blew by a series of billboards, the flicker of one of the newer ones caught my eye. I thought, "Wait, was that Lexi?" The more I thought about it, and then as I pulled into my work parking lot, the more I thought that it just might be my youngest granddaughter. The previous fall, some of us select Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation staffers were asked to bring family members to walk through the new interactive visitor center display. A photographer wandered around in the background to take photos and video. 

With that in mind, I talked with our design team to see who headed up work on the billboard so I could take a look at it, in the light. It turns out that, sure enough, it was Lexi on the billboard. And she looks great!