https://www.sportscasting.com/43-yea...n-pickup-game/
Magic was famous for never losing in those ucla summer pickup games because he would call the game in his favour every time. Can’t blame him as it’s just how lakers were called by the league.
Wilt Chamberlain blocked Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 17 times in the 1972 WCF on his way to a championship (msn.com)
including 5 times during a 12-minute span in Game 3, where he held Kareem scoreless. There is even video footage on the internet showing The Big Dipper blocking Jabbar’s skyhook twice on the same possession.
https://www.sportscasting.com/43-yea...n-pickup-game/
Magic was famous for never losing in those ucla summer pickup games because he would call the game in his favour every time. Can’t blame him as it’s just how lakers were called by the league.
Another chapter to Wilts legacy and to Magics Laker gotry.
Philly should have taken Wilt up on his willingness to play. Wilt was hitting the volleyball on the regular and was in excellent shape.
Story doesn't really add up. Says it was when Wilt was 43 so that would be some time in 79-80 and supposedly AC Green was playing but he would have been 15-16 at the time and he wasn't from the LA area.
Is th at magics rookie season? Age couldn’t been wrong but story is believable. Magic was known to call the games in his own favour so he doesn’t lose.
Latest it could have been is 80-81 since that was Brown's last season as coach at UCLA, but that would make Wilt 44 or 45. Byron Scott playing at UCLA would make sense since he lived in Inglewood and that's about the time he was a major player at ASU but AC Green doesn't make sense at all and I kind of wonder if this is a story grossly embellished by old man with bad memory yelling at cloud. I don't buy for a second that Magic Johnson, Byron Scott, Bernard King, James Worthy, and AC Green couldn't have gotten a single shot off against Wilt. Speaking of Worthy, he didn't come to LA until 82-83 and lived in North Carolina in this 79-81 time frame so I doubt he was in this pickup game either.
Wilt was 43 in year 1982.
Wilt Chamberlain Dead At 63 - CBS News in Oct 1999
1999 - 1982 = 17
63 - 17 = 46
Wilt got stuck with West, who'd been permanently spiritually wrecked by the Celtics.
Jabbar was fortunate and had Magic to reconstruct his tortured soul, get him///set him upright while at the same time adjudicate his own demons after the '84 Playoffs-&-Finals debacles delivering his own salvation and that of Jabbar as well in '85, confirmation in '87...Dutch Uncling it---'10.
Is it possible old dude simply got Wilts age at the time of the game wrong?
And / or did Larry Brown ever spend a week or two in LA in the off season after coaching UCLA?
Embellishment is likely one of the reasons. But wilt blocking a lot of shots against nba level players in his 40s is believable.
I watched the Walton/Blazers do entary and Bill had his moment vs Lakers
So OP is believable
Kareem is still my #2 all time
Walton dominating Kareem when Magic was at Michigan State made a story about Wilt dominating Magic believable?
Thus endeth the basic math lesson.
What doesn't end, Lue, is your being a squealer, a rat, a stoolie. Ya rat, ya.
But there was no calm, dignified descent from the apex like with Jabbar. Hakeem just crashed and burned.
There was bad, rancid blood twixt Walton and the Lakers Org., that was kept tamped down (away from MSM) to-this-day. It just worked better that way for all concerned. What should have been a match made in Southern California heaven was in reality a living nightmare that finally came to a natural American/pure U.S.A. head during the '80's when Walton traversed the American coast(s), a scoreboard was NBA mandated, plugged in and score kept for the annals, living proof so there could be no mistakes made in the disposition of the principles involved.
Let this sink in: Chamberlain averaged 40 points per game during a record stretch of 515 straight games.
Bill was fixated on Kareem.
Wilt
Karl
Mello
Harden
Iverson
His rebounding numbers are just as disgusting. He was far and away the best defender as well. He also got the exact opposite treatment as Shaq did on offense. If he used power dribbles or used a lot of his butt in his drop step he get whistled. There was no question of "how do you call a man of that size."
OTOH, you could hack and push the out of him and they wouldn't call . That is why you ended up with his weird looking game of finger rolls and turnarounds. He still put 50/30 a night.
When Wilt played Jabbar in his 30s, Kareem could use his quickness to get to spots but that was about it.
Wilt Chamberlain is said to have had a 48-inch vertical jump—the same as Michael Jordan. Chamberlain could bench press 550 pounds, 85 pounds more than the max of Shaquille O'Neal. Wilt high jumped 6 feet, 6 inches, ran the 440 yards in 49.0 seconds and the 880 yards in 1:58.3, put the shot 53 feet, 4 inches, and long jumped 22 feet.
I always wonder why Wilt's career average is 'only' 30. He averaged 50 one year, 44 in another. How is his career average 'only' 30? Maybe his final few Laker years really hurt the average a lot. Would like to know his PPG before he started with the Lakers.
Wilt identified as a Flamer beginning in 68-69.
Year ending / ppg
69 20
70 27
71 20
72 14
73 13
Dk why it jumped back up to 27 in 1970.
FWIW Wilts sole Championship as a Flamer came in a 14 ppg year, 1972.
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