← Pablo Torre Finds Out
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Wilt Chamberlain and the Conspiracy Factory: We Unearthed the True Story of the 100-Point Game
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- [00:00]
Pablo Torre
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings. The Crown is yours. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
- [00:11]
Pat McAfee
I used to hate the fact that there was no video of it, but as time goes on, I think it kind of adds to the mystique of the game.
- [00:19]
Pablo Torre
Right after this ad, you're listening to DraftKings Network. When you heard from us, Gary Pomerantz, that we wanted to do this topic because of what people had been saying on the Internet, were you excited?
- [00:48]
Gary Pomerantz
My intuitive reaction was, here we go again. My second reaction was something approximating an eye roll. You know, it's a conspiratorial time.
- [01:01]
Pat McAfee
Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas.
- [01:11]
Gary Pomerantz
You go back to the 1960s, and there were still a lot of questions about the Kennedy assassination.
- [01:19]
Pat McAfee
That's one small step for man, one triathlete for mankind.
- [01:29]
Gary Pomerantz
Did Neil Armstrong really touch the moon, or was he in a studio somewhere in the United States? So it was that kind of a time. And now, you know, we're unfortunately a bit of a historically illiterate country. If there's no video, then it didn't happen. Well, we know the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but there's no video of that. We know about Lincoln at Gettysburg. There's no video of that.
- [01:55]
Pablo Torre
Do we, though? Are we sure?
- [01:57]
Gary Pomerantz
We're pretty sure.
- [01:58]
Pablo Torre
Are we sure about that?
- [01:58]
Gary Pomerantz
We're pretty sure Lincoln was at Gettysburg. Yeah. And so, you know, for sports fans, you gotta lock in on how different the NBA was then and how different sports media was then. When Kobe scores 81, 15 minutes later online, you can buy a DVD of his performance. So that's what we're used to. That's the immediacy of today with technology. It wasn't so then.
- [02:26]
Pablo Torre
Do you remember the first time you heard somebody casting aspersions on the subject that you have literally written the book about?
- [02:34]
Gary Pomerantz
Yeah. I mean, there was always questions of how could he have done this? How could anybody score 100 points? Kobe's 81 is second best. And that's not even close. There's something too, about the number 100, the symbolism of 100. It's a century. It's a perfect score on a test. If Wilted scored 102 or 97, we wouldn't embrace it or question it even as we do. And so I decided all these decades later, I gotta find out what happened here. This is one of the most famous and famously unknown stories in sports history. The deeper I went, it became, you know, like Alice in Wonderland. Curiouser and curiouser.
- [03:44]
Pablo Torre
So the anniversary of one of the most iconic performances in the history of sports is approaching on Sunday. But what most distinguishes Wilt Chamberlain's single game scoring record is that right now, for each of his points on March 2, 1962, there appears to be just as many questions 60 plus years later.
- [04:05]
Pat McAfee
If I'm understanding correctly. On the Pat McAfee show, we are.
- [04:08]
Gary Pomerantz
Now questioning the veracity of Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game.
- [04:11]
Pat McAfee
We're questioning whether this is whether or.
- [04:14]
Gary Pomerantz
Not this actually happened.
- [04:15]
Pat McAfee
No, no, we're not.
- [04:16]
Gary Pomerantz
Pac man is not. But I did not know that there was no documented footage of this until just now. So as soon as that happens, boom. My brain goes, whoa. The people always say they don't know if it's true or if it's false balls. Did Wilt actually score 100 points?
- [04:34]
Pat McAfee
Like, even the scores table people like, did they all die?
- [04:37]
Pablo Torre
Like, yeah, like, that's why I'm curious.
- [04:38]
Pat McAfee
Who'S on the Knicks?
- [04:39]
Pablo Torre
Is anyone still?
- [04:41]
Gary Pomerantz
You just.
- [04:41]
Pat McAfee
That's. That was the only thing that could, like, sell me on. Like, there was people like, yeah, I was actually at that game.
- [04:47]
Gary Pomerantz
People know what happened 10 billion years ago.
- [04:51]
Pablo Torre
They know how the Earth was created.
- [04:53]
Gary Pomerantz
They know what the Egyptians were talking about, what they were saying, even though that is like aliens, even though that.
- [04:58]
Pablo Torre
Is six languages removed from what we're.
- [05:00]
Gary Pomerantz
Talking about right now. And nobody knows outside of a sheet.
- [05:04]
Pablo Torre
Of paper with crayon on it that says 100 and on and on. It goes across Reddit and TikTok and YouTube to the point where we here at Pablo Torre finds out. Got a voicemail about this topic at our detective agency hotline 51385. Pablo.
- [05:21]
Pat McAfee
Hey, Pablo. Long time. First time. There's been a lot of stuff going around the Internet lately about whether or.
- [05:29]
Tom Meschery
Not Wilkes scored 100 points. Because there's a lot of old footage from the 50s and 60s of the.
- [05:35]
Pat McAfee
NBA, but nothing really about that supposed 100 point game.
- [05:41]
Pablo Torre
And then we got another one.
- [05:43]
Tom Meschery
Hi, Pablo, my name is Matthew. I have a question. And it's actually kind of a conspiracy theory that perhaps only I believe in.
- [05:52]
Pat McAfee
But maybe others do.
- [05:53]
Tom Meschery
We shall find out. It revolves around Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game.
- [06:00]
Pat McAfee
We have no video evidence of this happening as far as I know.
- [06:05]
Tom Meschery
And the only photographic evidence of this is a locker room photo and a piece of paper that says 100 on it. I'm not sure that I truly believe and trust that Wilt Chamberlain actually scored.
- [06:22]
Pat McAfee
100 points in a game.
- [06:23]
Tom Meschery
I know that sounds crazy, but I need your help.
- [06:29]
Pablo Torre
Now. Those callers sounded reasonable enough to us that we finally decided it was time to get to the bottom of what seems to be a global mystery. And the first person we called was Stanford professor Gary Pomerantz, the aforementioned author of the book Wilt 1962. And Gary immediately established something. He established that one tricky thing about fact checking Wilt Chamberlain is that Wilt Chamberlain's whole brand was to be larger than life.
- [06:59]
Gary Pomerantz
Wilt was a luminous star at that time. He's just 25 years old. He's got a nightclub in Harlem called Big Wilt Small's Paradise. Smalls paradise dates the halcyon days of the Harlem Renaissance. And Wilt walked through that place like he owned all of Harlem, like he owned all of New York. Redd Fox, Etta James, Cannonball Adderley. Wilt's the greeter, the tallest greeter in NBA history. Wilt had a Goliath syndrome. He was 7 1, 260 pounds. Dolph Shays of the Syracuse national said his body was the most perfect instrument made by God to play basketball. You know, another writer likened Wilt's body to first sight of the New York skyline. I mean, think about this. 7:1, 260 pounds. His back triangulates down to a 31 inch dancer's waist. The guy was cut. The guy could run the floor like a train. Everything about him was magnificent.
- [08:00]
Pablo Torre
I had to do a lot of just reacquainting myself with history as well. For this, Wilt was singing his own tune, literally on American Bandstand, right by.
- [08:13]
Gary Pomerantz
The river, down by the river, by the river. You know, he wasn't Frankie Valli. He wasn't very good. But they did cut a record of it. You know, he had a racehorse named Spooky Cadet and never won. He had an Asian motif apartment off Central park west in New York. And then of course, there was Will telling stories about his womanizing.
- [08:55]
Pablo Torre
That's the number that people are most, you know, had been most obsessed with that statistic. 20,000.
- [09:02]
Gary Pomerantz
If I had to count my sexual.
- [09:04]
Pablo Torre
Encounters, I'd be closing in on 20,000 women. That equals to having sex with 1.2 women a day every day since I was 15 years old. What kind of reaction did you receive after that? And do you still receive?
- [09:15]
Pat McAfee
Well, you know, I still, I still receive.
- [09:17]
Pablo Torre
What's the fact checking on that, like.
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Gary Pomerantz
Well, the fact checking is difficult to do, as a matter of fact. But I interviewed one of the 20,000, a woman named Linda Huey, who became a great friend of Wilt's at the end of his life. She said, wilt, why did you say 20,000? And Wilt's response was to wink and say, what's an extra zero between friends?
- [09:40]
Pat McAfee
But, you know, I thought maybe one of the reasons you invited me on the show was to give me an award from the Board of Education. Because whenever people see me now, they go, 20,000. And let's see, he must have started, he was like 15. He's now maybe 55. So let's see, 20,365, 20,000.
- [10:01]
Gary Pomerantz
And, you know, and then you're getting.
- [10:05]
Pat McAfee
People thinking, not only that, I'm teaching them mathematics, which is really the whole, the whole story here, you understand?
- [10:12]
Gary Pomerantz
I don't think that's going to be.
- [10:12]
Pablo Torre
A word problem for kids if Will.
- [10:15]
Gary Pomerantz
Chamberlain is with 10 women on a train headed east.
- [10:18]
Pat McAfee
That's right.
- [10:20]
Gary Pomerantz
I got this sense as I was working on this book, you know, excavating this 100 point game. There's a comic book superhero quality to Wilt, his life, his numbers. I interviewed ultimately 56 people who were there, 15 of them players. The broadcaster, the statistician, the shot clock operator, a number of fans. Look, Pablo, when you go back into this time, you're going back into a time when the NBA was a lounge act. It was a league in search of itself. The crowds weren't very big. The joke used to be that the PA announcer would introduce the players in the starting lineup and then would introduce each fan. It was nine teams in the league, only one team west of St. Louis, that would be the Lakers, who'd moved out a year before to the West. And the league was trying to grow new fans. And that's why they played in outlying areas that had sizable arenas. The Lakers played a game in Portland. They played a game in Seattle. The Celtics played in Providence. And the Philadelphia warriors played three games that year in Hershey. This was the third of those games.
- [11:32]
Pablo Torre
You should know that Hershey, Pennsylvania, population in 1962, about 7,000, sits in the shadow of Amish country. That's where the chocolate capital of America is located. Which doesn't entirely explain why there is no full recording of the Philadelphia warriors game against the visiting New York Knicks on second 1962. But electricity in general was scarce. The game wasn't televised. The NBA, as Gary said, was basically a lounge act. But the sport was Big enough for an AM radio station, wcau, Philadelphia. Except it soon became clear, particularly to legendary play by play man Bill Campbell, who was frantically calling technicians back at the station in Philly, that nobody involved with this broadcast had actually kept a tape of the game which then created a puzzle of its own.
- [12:32]
Gary Pomerantz
Well, you have to realize back then TV stations didn't save tapes, they were saving money. And they were re taping over these tapes. That's why they disappear with television. That's why they disappear some with radio. It was a game 75 in an 80 game season.
- [12:52]
Pablo Torre
But very recently, about 60 plus years later, something kind of crazy happened because we here at Pablo Torre finds out, found a Philly basketball fan by the name of Sammy Marcus. And Sammy Marcus had never given an interview about this before. But in 1962, Sammy used to listen to every warriors radio broadcast on March 2nd. However, that Friday he decided to do something different. He went to go see the Elizabeth Taylor film Butterfield 8.
- [13:26]
Pat McAfee
And then I came home from that, turned on the radio just in time to hear Bill Campbell say, world Chamberlain.
- [13:34]
Tom Meschery
Just scored 100 points. 100 points, fans.
- [13:39]
Pat McAfee
Oh my God, what a game to miss.
- [13:43]
Pablo Torre
So I didn't give up. I thought, where else can I get this recorded?
- [13:47]
Pat McAfee
Called up a friend the next day.
- [13:49]
Pablo Torre
And he said that he had recorded.
- [13:51]
Pat McAfee
It, but only the fourth quarter and only when the warriors had the ball. This is where I have the tape somewhere.
- [13:58]
Pablo Torre
And so Sammy ran over to his friend's house with his own recorder and microphone and he bootlegged that puzzle piece right off the speakers. And it's a tape he still has today.
- [14:11]
Pat McAfee
One of these is the tape.
- [14:12]
Tom Meschery
Just don't know which one.
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Pablo Torre
Oh, that's a Floyd Patterson Sonny Liston fight. Ah, this is the one. All of which is how the NBA got a copy of a grainy secondhand recording of history, or at least a fraction of that history. But as for the rest of Wilt's pivotal fourth quarter, including the Knicks possessions, the way we wound up finding that involved a different box entirely. Hi, my name is Tessa Burns and.
- [14:45]
Gary Pomerantz
I'm archivist here at Hershey Community Archives. We are inside of our collection storage facility here at the Hershey Story Museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania. We heard from the producers at Pablo Torre finds out asking us about one particular event in Hershey sports history, which was Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game at the Hershey Arena.
- [15:06]
Pablo Torre
And this puzzle piece, it turns out, was the full fourth quarter. But it wasn't taped in Hershey at all. Actually, it was taped at UMass Amherst by an aspiring student broadcaster named Jim, who listened by rigging his transistor radio to the five story heating pipe in his dormitory. And that night in that dorm, Jim broke out a reel to reel tape recorder, apparently the one his girlfriend had been using for elocution lessons. And many years later, those reels would finally find their way back home.
- [15:42]
Gary Pomerantz
So I did some searching in our collections and I was very excited to find this box right here.
- [15:47]
Pablo Torre
So this is from our Hershey Entertainment.
- [15:50]
Gary Pomerantz
And Resorts company collection. And when we look inside, you can see we have some audio visual material, some CDs, set tape, and then the most exciting item here is this five and three quarter inch reel to reel tape. So this is an audio recording format. It's magnetic media. If we look inside, you can see that we do have in fact the original tape.
- [16:17]
Pablo Torre
Not even the Basketball hall of Fame has the tape of Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game. By the way, as their historian explained to us, they've never even had an official exhibit devoted to Wilt. But this show now has two independently sourced recordings of the pivotal fourth quarter, plus a third, entirely different box of tapes that I need to tell you about because this is a box of tapes that contains Gary's interviews which we're going to curate for you as part of this exhibit here today.
- [16:52]
Gary Pomerantz
Well, that's the joy of it to me. You know, that's what the attorneys call discovery. You know, you go and immerse yourself, full immersion. And I would travel far and wide to find these people and it becomes an obsession. You know, what about this? I called Bill Campbell so many times I called last time I called him, I said, bill, it's Gary Pomerantz. And he said, not again. And that's just. Bill, one more thing, one more question, two more question.
- [17:23]
Pablo Torre
We can relate, we can relate here. You know, Gary, one of our joys was that we actually did unearth your 22 year old interview tapes. Because at Emory University at the rare Book Library, manuscript collection number 890, we found your archive. And just tell me how you feel as we go back to March 1962.
- [17:46]
Pat McAfee
WCAU, WCAU FM in Philadelphia. The time is 3:30 off and we're ready to go. And here's Bill Campbell. Good. The big fourth quarter and everybody's thinking, how many Wilt gotta get? He's got 69 going in. Here's the pass to him. He's got another one.
- [18:02]
Gary Pomerantz
Well, Wilt's got 69 points going into the fourth quarter, right? And so he still needs 31 points. You know, that's a lot of points.
- [18:13]
Pat McAfee
Rogers takes the jump shot. It's no good. Chamberlain with a rebound.
- [18:19]
Gary Pomerantz
And he just scored 28 points in the third quarter. And the Knicks are just going through the motions. It's a 10, 15, 20 point lead.
- [18:30]
Pat McAfee
The warriors have inside to Adoles, to Chamberlain. He's got it 133 to 114. And the fellows on the Warrior bench are jumping for joy for him. Every time he scores, they will be ready. Jump up in a body.
- [18:49]
Gary Pomerantz
Now, the NBA didn't find out about this tape until 1990. And it's like, wait, what? That's just the way things were then.
- [19:00]
Pat McAfee
We're just conjecturing here. How many can he make? He's got 9 minutes and 24 seconds left. And the guesses are running as high as 100.
- [19:10]
Pablo Torre
This is Bill Campbell that you're hearing. This is the play by play announcer. And in Philly, wcau, the radio broadcast. But it's one of your interviewees, a primary source here, who is in the game somewhere on the court, Joe Rucklich, that I wanted to ask you about because Joe Rucklich sounds like he might be a guest on the McAfee show at times revisiting some of these tapes. Hearing you in O3 Talk to Joe Rucklich is a time machine inside of a time machine.
- [19:40]
Gary Pomerantz
Well, Joe was the Kennedy liberal from Northwestern when I got there as their.
- [19:45]
Pat McAfee
First draft choice that season out of Northwestern, behind Wilt. Wilt was technically first.
- [19:54]
Gary Pomerantz
He was Wilt's backup. Now think about it. When you're the backup to a player who never comes out of the game, you don't play very much. But he observed a lot and he was a very keen observer. Joe also was into conspiracy theories. And Joe said, wait a minute, why did this tape just appear 28 years later? And Joe said he questioned whether Bill Campbell had. Had recreated it.
- [20:22]
Pat McAfee
Right. I don't think Campbell was there. But you know what? That's.
- [20:25]
Gary Pomerantz
So what are you saying? If I get a tape.
- [20:27]
Pat McAfee
What are you saying about the tape? I think you get the last few minutes.
- [20:30]
Gary Pomerantz
I think it's only the last quarter.
- [20:33]
Pat McAfee
Yeah. Less than that. I've got it. You do? I think it's fake. But anyway. Yeah, real.
- [20:40]
Pablo Torre
Why do you think it's fake? Well, his allegation seems to be even a little more pointed than that. It was. That Bill Campbell wasn't even there. Actually, he wasn't really the announcer.
- [20:49]
Pat McAfee
If it's a fake, it illustrates the nonsense that the NBA perpetrates about. About those days. It was a bush league. I mean, it was really bush.
- [21:05]
Gary Pomerantz
Bill Campbell was there. Bill Campbell and I spoke and he talked about dreading going to Hershey, you know, for game 75 of an 80 game season.
- [21:14]
Pat McAfee
It was annoying because instead of doing a home game at home, we had to go to Hershey. Players weren't happy either.
- [21:21]
Gary Pomerantz
It's a long drive and it sure would be nice to be playing at, you know, at home in Philadelphia.
- [21:27]
Pat McAfee
Wilt, in order to come to that game, took a train. I remember him being there early, but.
- [21:32]
Gary Pomerantz
He remembered vividly the game and the details.
- [21:37]
Pat McAfee
Everything was such constant ease. It was effortless. They broke the ball up and he'd go out and get it and dunk it. They knew something unnatural was going to happen here, and they offered.
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Pablo Torre
As for just how bush league game 75 really was, I should acknowledge that Joe Rucklich, dead wrong about the tape of the fourth quarter being this false flag operation. Also relatedly, it's funny that none of the online conspiracists that we mentioned before did enough research to be able to cite Joe Rucklich's theory in the first place. But it is pretty easy to imagine why the whole event did feel a bit confused.
- [22:19]
Gary Pomerantz
This is played in an arena that's built for hockey. The hockey team, the Hershey Bears. There's not during this game a big screen where it says, number 13, big fella, how many shots attempted, made, free throws attempted, made, assists, et cetera. There's just a cold, metallic, boxy scoreboard up in the netherland of this place that says, you know, Philadelphia, New York, even the people who are watching the game don't have context.
- [22:53]
Pablo Torre
But Wilt Chamberlain, as he later explained in an interview with Bob Costas, was keeping score.
- [23:00]
Pat McAfee
The game starts. I'm fairly warm. I'm really warm from the foul. I'm not missing anything from the foul. That should have gave me some kind of hint that, you know, you made 28 of 32 from the foul line.
- [23:10]
Pablo Torre
That night, which is good for anybody.
- [23:12]
Gary Pomerantz
And staggering for you.
- [23:13]
Pat McAfee
I appreciate that. Right? Staggering. Staggering for me, you understand? But I was even better than that the first half. I was missing nothing. I was a hundred percent, A hundred percent, remember? So I said, hey, you know, things are going pretty good. And I had, I think, like 44, 41 points at halftime, and I was shooting well.
- [23:30]
Pablo Torre
And one big reason Wilt was playing so well is that the Knicks starting center was out sick and apparently kind of hungover. And so, yes, Wilt would go on to average 50 points a game that season. But the man primarily tasked with stopping the single most unstoppable offensive performance in basketball history, arguably all of sports history, was not supposed to be starting that night. And instead what he became was the answer to a trivia question forever.
- [24:06]
Pat McAfee
This is an interview with Daryl Imhoff I M H O F F in Eugene, Oregon on July 8, 2003. By the way, I taped, I double tape in case one tape fails. Okay. Isn't this interesting? Yeah.
- [24:23]
Gary Pomerantz
So, gosh, Darrell was a second year player, 6 10, left handed. And you know, he was primarily a defender at times a rough defender. He would become known as the axe for axing, you know, shooter's arms.
- [24:39]
Pat McAfee
You know, Wilt was an attraction and I was going to have to spend the next that night in his armpits. So I wasn't looking forward to that.
- [24:51]
Gary Pomerantz
And one of the things that was so interesting, he was then working in Eugene, Oregon at the U.S. basketball Academy, a training ground. And we walked by an open court and I said, darrell, could you come here for a second? I stood in the middle of the lane. I said, show me how you defended Wilt that night. Wilt, Imhoff said, would arch his back and it was like a tree and Darrell's behind him down low. He said it was like a tree was gonna fall down on me. I said, so what would you do? And he said, I did this. And he took the point of his elbow and put it in my rhomboids right between the shoulder blades. And, and Darrell could still inflict some pain all these years later, but he said he, he would position himself behind Wilt with. When Wilt's down on the offensive left side down by where we would now see the block. The block didn't exist then. And he would put his knee into Wilt's, the back of his thigh to collapse his leg. He would put his foot inside of Wilt's left foot to keep him from turning in. Darrell played only 20 minutes and fouled out. He was in and out of the game. So he played some in the second half. Six fouls covering Wilt. The tallest, next, next, tallest player the Knicks had was six foot eight rookie Cleveland Buckner. Six eight, they said 210 pounds. He's probably 185, 190. He was a stick. He scored 33 points that night too, I might add. It was a career night for him. What a night to have a career night. Seven and a half minutes are left when Wilt, he scores and Harvey Pollock, statistician. He passes over a sheet of paper to the PA Announcer, the great Dave Zinkoff. Zinkoff then announces, wilt Chamberlain has just set a new record for most points in a game. He has 79 points, breaking his 78 point scored in three overtime game earlier that season. And while he's announcing that Wilt makes shooting underhanded, two more free throws to go to 80 and 81.
- [27:01]
Pat McAfee
On the PA they're announcing the new record of 79. And during the announcement, Chamberlain goes right ahead through the announcement and makes a foul. They're still making the announcement. He makes another foul chamber didn't even listen to it. He just made two straight fouls.
- [27:17]
Tom Meschery
He now has 81 points granny style.
- [27:20]
Gary Pomerantz
Granny style. He looked ridiculous doing it because he's so big. He would squat down low, his knees would flare out. He looked like an adult trying to sit in a kindergartner's chair.
- [27:30]
Pablo Torre
What did Daryl say to you, particularly Gary, if you recall in your interview with him about the refs?
- [27:36]
Gary Pomerantz
He just thought they loved Wilt. And you know that at one point they called a foul against Imhoff that Imhoff did not think was a foul.
- [27:44]
Pat McAfee
And he started backing in. And I held my position and Willie Smith had called me for a foul. And I said, really, I'm allowed to position? And I said, why don't you, why don't you give the guy 100 points, we'll all go home. I mean, you did say that.
- [27:55]
Gary Pomerantz
You said.
- [27:55]
Pat McAfee
Right, I said that. Why don't you give him 100 points, we'll go home. And he did. Going in for the layup. Up with a shot. No good. Chamberlain rebounds. Good. Chamberlain rebounds and scores. And he's fouled. 145 to 126. Daryl Imhoff fouled him. He has 83.
- [28:17]
Gary Pomerantz
And the game took on, you know, Daryl would call it a farce.
- [28:20]
Pat McAfee
My word is a farce. It was a farce of a game. It was not. I don't think it was a legitimate type of thing where a guy goes out in the course of event. I mean, we had guys score 60 points. Elgin Bader scored 60 points against in the guard. I mean, that was a legitimate great performance. Jerry west had 60 against us in the sports arena against same year in that year. It was one of those things where guys had individual performances that were great, but it wasn't done the way that one was done. And that's what makes that a farce. I just don't. I don't see it as one of the great games ever. And I think the 100 point game is totally out of context with what you would consider the great games that were played in the NBA by great players.
- [29:24]
Pablo Torre
So this is where I need to observe that everybody who's been trying to undermine Wilt's record by asking if it really happened has been asking the wrong question. Because what Daryl Imhoff is arguing here as one of the principles is not that the 100 point game never took place. What Daryl is arguing is that compared to other great performances, Wilt's 100 was abnormal and ultimately illegitimate to the point of being, quote, a farce.
- [29:59]
Gary Pomerantz
With seven and a half minutes to play and everybody realizing now what the stakes were, the Knicks started not quite stalling, but sort of couple extra passes, then they start running a weave down court, taking the ball in 94ft from the basket. The warriors start committing fouls of the Knicks to get the ball back quicker to get the ball to Wilt cross court.
- [30:24]
Pat McAfee
The Butcher as they eat up as much time as they can. Butchered of a circle and fouled by Rodgers. Warriors figured the only way to combat the New York stall is to come out and foul the backcourt on themselves.
- [30:37]
Gary Pomerantz
If somebody walked into the arena and they see the warriors fouling and the Knicks stalling, they're going to think the Knicks are ahead by 20, not the Warriors. That's where it breaks down.
- [30:49]
Pat McAfee
Nalls is fouled by Joe Recklich and I almost came to blows. New York, of course you can understand the Knickerbockers feelings. They're a little upset having rubbed in a little bit like this with a guy on a scoring rampant.
- [31:03]
Gary Pomerantz
Whether or not it became a farce is a serious question. You know, when the structure of the game breaks down and the team that's 20 points behind is stalling, something's weird, something strange.
- [31:15]
Pat McAfee
Yeah, you've got a situation where you're feeding somebody intentionally make something happen. But that's what was going on. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't in the flow of the game. Now the first, you know, the first half she will or three quarters, it was certainly in the flow of the game. But when they started doing some things intentionally to foul and get him the ball and left him in the game when the game was already over, I mean, it was obvious they were out to prove something and so they did.
- [31:38]
Pablo Torre
There's a moment, you know, just in terms of recreating when people began to realize we're witnessing something that we'll be talking about forever. There's the moment where Bill Campbell, the play by play guy on the radio broadcast says on a night work this night.
- [31:52]
Pat McAfee
Down Chamberlain on the line. Foul shot up in the air. He has 84, 146 to 126. If you know anybody not listening, call him up. A little history you're sitting in on tonight.
- [32:07]
Pablo Torre
This brings us as we get deeper into the fourth quarter. Gary to the 98 point mark. So the psychology of the 98 point moment here. Who gets the ball to Wilt? How does this play unfold here?
- [32:21]
Gary Pomerantz
Well, there's a guard named York Larisi and he's leading the fast break. And so he doesn't see Wilt behind him, but he hears the big fella, the mighty huff and puff. He feels the vibration of the floor when Chamberlain's moving. And so he just as he's going straight at the basket, he doesn't distribute left or right. He just sort of throws the ball up and continues on underneath the basket, past the baseline and out of play. At which point he looks back and sees Wilt, the mighty Dipper, grabbing the ball, fully extended, my arms leaving the screen. And then slams it in one movement.
- [33:02]
Pat McAfee
Larisi with the ball down the right side, passes to Chamber and he's open. He shoots. He's gone it. 167 to 145. He has a 98.
- [33:17]
Pablo Torre
What was the call, what was the, the sequence of events to get to to the number?
- [33:24]
Gary Pomerantz
Well, wilt would have three attempts at the 100 point basket. And in fact one of them came after he scored on that slam dunk to hit 98. He scored, started to run down court and quickly turned around and stole the.
- [33:37]
Pat McAfee
Ball.
- [33:42]
Gary Pomerantz
And missed it from around the free throw line. Then he'd get two more attempts and there's 50 seconds left. And now the warriors have the ball and Guy Rogers, who would have 20 assists on this night, a wonderful passer. He throws the ball down court length of the court to Wilt, who jumps, catches it because the next tallest snake is five, five inches short.
- [34:08]
Pat McAfee
Rogers throws long to Chamberlain. He's got it. He's trying to get up. He shoots. No good. The rebound, Luckinville.
- [34:15]
Gary Pomerantz
And Ted Luckinville, a rookie, comes in, gets the rebound, gets it to Wilt again, back to Chamberlain.
- [34:22]
Pat McAfee
He shoots up. No goods, in and out.
- [34:25]
Gary Pomerantz
He misses Luckinville again.
- [34:47]
Pat McAfee
People are sprouting, pounding and dining themselves. The Warrior players are all over him. Fans are coming out of his stands. 46 seconds left. The most amazing scoring performance of all time. 100 points for the big difference.
- [35:09]
Gary Pomerantz
An adrenalized moment for the fans and for Wilt, until he gets to the locker room and sees the statute. He's sitting next to Al Adols and he's shaking his head, and Adoles says, what's the matter, big fella? He said, I can't believe I took 63 shots, 21 of them in the fourth quarter. And Adel said, that's okay. You made 36 of them. That's all right. The criticism against Wilt is not his athleticism. It's always that he cared more about himself and his own statistics rather than the greater good of the team. And this night, he thought for many years reflected that criticism in a big way.
- [35:56]
Pablo Torre
And, yeah, I understand why. I mean, it's worth remembering here that the most enduring image of that night, the thing that everybody remembers still today, was the Big Dipper holding a piece of paper with the number of points he scored written on it. But the person responsible for that meme, it turns out, was not Wilt Chamberlain. It was the same warriors statistician that Gary mentioned earlier, a man named Harvey Pollock.
- [36:27]
Gary Pomerantz
Harvey Pollock was a legend in Philadelphia basketball. He was an employee of the Philadelphia warriors, then the Philadelphia 76ers, for six decades. And at the time this game is being played, he's known as the Octopus, because he would send out a Christmas card every year with the Octopus, each arm representing another thing he did. On this night, When Wilt scores 100, Harvey is the statistician. He is a publicist who's got to arrange any interviews. He's writing the game story for the Philadelphia Inquirer, who didn't care enough about it to send anybody. He's writing for AP and he's writing for United Press. That's a lot of work. And in fact, when he finished the scorekeeping and added stuff up, he thought, oh, my, what if Will ends out with 98 points? Well, you know, one of the things you hear on the radio is, I think three times the final score is 169 to 150.
- [37:29]
Pat McAfee
Butcher breaks down for an easy layup, and he's got it 169 away. One person.
- [37:36]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I was going to mention this. Yeah.
- [37:38]
Gary Pomerantz
And the Knicks. Now we look back on it and see the Knicks at 147, and no one could reconcile that. For me, I think it was just sort of this slap dash nature of the whole night. And this was one more aspect of it. Oh, yeah, the Knicks. Well, it doesn't matter what the Knicks got. You know, all that Matters is, is.
- [37:57]
Pablo Torre
What Will, right there was the disc. Well, that's it, right? The discrepancy between what the radio announcer was saying versus the official score. Score. There's all this confusion. You hear it on the tape a couple of times. But what the. The Octopus. He makes sure to establish that there is no ambiguity around how many points Will Chamberlain scored, because he does the thing that results in the one piece of evidence that I think every basketball fan has seen.
- [38:23]
Gary Pomerantz
Pollock looks around and says, hef to Jim Heffernan, the sports writer of the Philadelphia Bulletin, Let me borrow a sheet of paper. And he takes out what was a Magic Marker. I don't think they had Sharpies in 1962. I may be wrong on that. And he writes, 1, 0, 0. And it's the backstory to this classic photo. And that might be the best picture in basketball history because of what it represents and who it represents. It's the Dipper on his night. Remember, this is a time when the NBA even its statistics in the way stats were kept, they didn't count block shots. You know, somebody said, how many shots did Will plug? I don't know. I don't know. We just have the numbers that they kept. Did The Knicks score 147 or 150? I don't know. I don't know.
- [39:21]
Pat McAfee
But.
- [39:22]
Gary Pomerantz
But to me, it was about getting to the essence of this story. There are some questions. Whether or not it happened is not a question.
- [39:47]
Pablo Torre
So this is where I should point out what might now feel obvious, which is that every person that Gary Pomerantz has mentioned to this point, every voice you've heard on this episode, has passed away. This will forever be a story about hidden boxes and lost recordings and secondary sources and truly tricky ambiguities, which is something that Wilt Chamberlain himself, who died in 1999, eventually learned to accept.
- [40:18]
Pat McAfee
I used to hate the fact that there was no video of it, but as time goes on, I think it kind of adds to the mystique of the game.
- [40:26]
Pablo Torre
Or in the words of Gary Pomerantz.
- [40:29]
Gary Pomerantz
And, you know, the baseball great Ted Williams used to say his dream was that when he walked down the street, people would point at him and say, there goes the greatest hitter in baseball history. Wilt came to realize that people would point at him as he walked down the street and say, there goes the guy who scored 100 points in a game. And he came to like it.
- [40:50]
Pablo Torre
But in our research near the end here, we were able to find one last primary source for the online exhibit we've been building a person who, at 86 years young, still has a unique and even poetic perspective on what really happened in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on March 2, 1962. Tom, give me the pronunciation of your name. I just want to make sure I'm getting it right. Macheri. Okay, good, good, good, good. Didn't know where the. The accent or the stress was going to be, but Macheri makes sense.
- [41:26]
Tom Meschery
My third grade teacher called Masheri Mashari Amor.
- [41:30]
Pablo Torre
Yes. A different nickname for. For a bruiser power forward.
- [41:36]
Tom Meschery
The one that pretty much stuck was the Nad Manchuria. That had to do with my birthplace. I was born in Manchuria, which is in China now. White Russian parents. And I was an immigrant kid. I came to the United States after the Second World War. My parents, my mother and I and my sister were interned in a Japanese concentration camp in Japan during the war. And then we came to the United States via the Red Cross, to San Francisco, where my father was waiting for us. And. And that's kind of where I learned. San Francisco is where I learned how to play basketball.
- [42:10]
Pablo Torre
And Tom Macheri really was good at basketball. The warriors, who eventually relocated from Philly to the Bay Area, retired his number, and Tom was in the starting lineup playing 40 minutes right alongside his teammate Wilt Chamberlain in Hershey, Pennsylvania on the day in question. And while Tom would go on to spend 24 years as a high school English teacher and also write five books of poetry and. And six novels and two memoirs, on.
- [42:41]
Tom Meschery
My mother's side, I'm related to the old story.
- [42:44]
Pablo Torre
He still thinks about Hershey all the time, in part because it was his very first season in the NBA.
- [42:55]
Tom Meschery
Talk about working out, huh? I got off the plane, I was pretty naive when I just walked into this fantastic moment.
- [43:04]
Pablo Torre
I'm getting the sense that as much as you were a guy who was not there to shoot that night, you enjoyed spectating yourself.
- [43:14]
Tom Meschery
I was mesmerized. I mean, the one thing I was a rookie. Imagine being a rookie from the west coast coming to the east coast, being part of the NBA. I mean, this was like a dream for me. A well deserved not to be questioned. My daughter called me up. She's a 8th grade middle school teacher. And she provided me with the news that some of her kids, you know, think that, well, this 100 point game was fake news just because there was no video of it.
- [43:50]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, look, the question of why people question every.
- [43:54]
Tom Meschery
For me, that's a very simple answer. I think we have a whole society that has. Anybody can say anything they want and there's no fact checks, and nobody believes in fact checks. Nobody believes in honesty. I mean, it's. We're in a really troubled times. They'll believe all sorts of conspiracy stuff.
- [44:19]
Pablo Torre
Well, one of the things I wanted to fact check with you was a theory of a different kind, because one of the people that was interviewed by Gary Pomerantz in his book is a gentleman by the name of Darrell Imhoff. You remember Darryl in some.
- [44:32]
Tom Meschery
Sure, sure, I remember Darrell. I chased him in the stands and almost beat him to death.
- [44:39]
Pablo Torre
Why? Why did you do that, Tom?
- [44:43]
Tom Meschery
Because I hated there.
- [44:45]
Pablo Torre
I'm getting the sense that the mad Manchurian may have also earned that nickname because you also tried to hit Darryl with a chair.
- [44:54]
Tom Meschery
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that chair. Yeah, it just sort of. Just sort of appeared in my head.
- [45:02]
Pablo Torre
But I bring up Daryl Imhoff now not simply because you have this personal backstory with him, but because I need you to help fact check something that he told Gary Pomeranz that we discovered in the course of fact checking the story of that night. Because the allegation that Daryl makes, of course, is not that the hundred points did not happen. He was there. He, in fact, personally was responsible for quite a number of those points, trying to guard Wilt. The allegation that Darrell Imhoff made on tape was this quote, the 100 point game was a farce.
- [45:38]
Tom Meschery
Well, I say sour grapes, kid. You know, you got smoked and, you know, fouled out and somebody else filled in for you and you couldn't stop Wilt. Nobody could stop Wilt that night. So it's just sour grape. I could just say your defense was a forest. That's why Wilt scored. If you want to be a forest. Maybe I should have punched out Imhoff a little more. I don't think anybody could have guarded Wilke that night. I don't think Shaq at his very best guarded Wilt that night. Wilt was indomitable that night. Everything he threw up went in. It was a miracle day. And if Darrell thinks it was manufactured, it was manufactured by the Lord God himself. I've never heard that. Daryl said that. That makes me angry. That makes me really angry.
- [46:38]
Pablo Torre
He accused you guys of pouring it on.
- [46:41]
Tom Meschery
As in, of course we poured. Absolutely. We poured it on. Poured it on because we were going to help our teammates score 100 points. There's nothing wrong with that. What I saw was a destruction. Unless my eyes were failing me. I saw destruction.
- [46:59]
Pablo Torre
So this is where I do need to jump in here and let Cooler Heads prevail for a second. For the sake of posterity, if nothing else. Because, yes, I have apparently goaded the bad Manchurian at age 86 back into bloodlust, but also because the thing that courses inside of Tom, the thing in his blood, as mentioned before, is really poetry.
- [47:23]
Tom Meschery
I grew up listening to poetry from my mother and my father both.
- [47:29]
Pablo Torre
And so you may not be surprised to find out at this point that the Big Dipper was not just a teammate and a friend to Tom, but also a muse.
- [47:41]
Tom Meschery
I wrote a poem last night. I don't know, I think because I was going to be on New York Zoom, and I was thinking about it.
- [47:51]
Pablo Torre
Would you. Would you mind reading some of the poem that you just wrote last night for me? Would you? Is that. Is that.
- [47:58]
Tom Meschery
I thought you'd never asked.
- [48:02]
Pablo Torre
I was wondering when the Mad Manchurian might read from his latest work.
- [48:10]
Tom Meschery
Okay, let me give it up. Let me give it a try, okay?
- [48:13]
Pablo Torre
Please.
- [48:16]
Tom Meschery
Welch Ghost March 2, 2025. Can you imagine on this day when Welt scored 100 points in a single game in Chocolate Town? His ghost striding onto the court of Chase arena six decades later, followed by his teammates in that game, all gone. Harrison, Gola, Rogers, Adoles, and the rest, except for me, waiting my turn to be a ghost, cheering like crazy for the Dipper because he always belonged in the sky.
- [49:08]
Pablo Torre
Tom, the mad Manchurian, the poet laureate of the NBA. You contain multitudes and you observed multitudes. And I very, very sincerely thank you for joining us.
- [49:22]
Pat McAfee
You're.
- [49:23]
Tom Meschery
You're very welcome.
- [49:33]
Pablo Torre
This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.
- [49:39]
Pat McAfee
Time smoking Gonna quit my drinking Start life anew that's easy to say but I'm gonna do it Gonna quit my.