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Wilt Chamberlain began making headlines the moment he stepped onto the basketball court as a sophomore at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia. Never before had someone so tall been so athletic and so darn dominant …
*Here in Philadelphia, Bill Chamberlain had to raise all the chandeliers and light fixtures in his house because of his son Wilton – Overbrook High School’s 6:11 sophomore scoring sensation. Wilt who answers to the name of “Stilt,” but prefers “Dippy,” is the biggest bundle ever to play basketball in the Public Conference. And, by the time he’s ready for college, he figures to be “the best player ever to come out of these parts.” That’s the opinion of Wilt’s coach, Sam Cozen, who’s a foot and then some smaller than his pupil.* **The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 1, 1953**
The Stilt/Dipper had burst onto the Philadelphia high school athletic scene a few months earlier, scoring 20 or more points a game and leading the Hilltoppers to several consecutive victories to open the season, and, eventually, the Public League title.
*Reports first began to circulate about Chamberlain last summer when folks remarked about “that great big boy with the long legs walking down Haverford ave. bouncing a basketball.” Wilt was on his way to the Haddington Recreation Center (57th and Haverford) for his daily scrimmage. He has spent many hours at Haddington, and he plans on many more … Basketball is Chamberlain’s main dish, of course, but he’s also keenly interested in track and swimming. He feels both will help further develop his coordination and build stamina.* **The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 1, 1953**
There was a short sidebar with the above article above explained how Chamberlain came to be called Dippy …
*“When I was 10,” Wilt says, “I was kind of big for my age and I was always bumping my head in doorways and places where the ceiling was low. I was playing in an empty house one day with some boy friends and I ran smack into a low hanging pipe and gave myself a beautiful black eye. My pals got a good laugh and told me the next time I ought to ‘dip under’ when I came to something low like that. The started calling me ‘The Dipper’ after that, and it became ‘Dipper’ and then just ‘Dippy.’”*
After winning the 1953 Public League championship, Wilt and his Hilltopper teammates played West Catholic (the Catholic League champs) for the Philadelphia city title. West Catholic’s coach came up with a unique way in practice to simulate playing against someone as tall as Chamberlain …
*“We, of course, never had faced anyone as tall as The Stilt,” West coach Jimmy Usilton said, “so we had a problem figuring out a defense. We finally took one of those long rubbing tables from our dressing room and placed it under one of the baskets. Then, each of our subs and javees alternated impersonating Chamberlain up on the table. Our regulars set up a shifting zone defense around the table and tried to stop the ball from getting to the player impersonating Chamberlain.*
*“We made the scrubs the guinea pigs,” Usilton added with a smile. “I didn’t want one of my regulars up there slipping on the table and ending up with an injury.”* **The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 14, 1953**
Usilton’s unique practice routine worked, as West beat the Hilltoppers 54-42.
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Overbrook beat South Catholic 74-50 for the 1955 city championship and crushed West Catholic 83-42 to win the 1956 title. Chamberlain scored 35 points against West, as nothing, not even the scrubs-on-tables practice strategy, could stop the unstoppable Dipper. Chamberlain and his Overbrook teams won 56 games and lost only three during his high-school career. He scored 90 points in a 123-21 win over Roxborough his senior year.
Harry Grayson, sports editor of the Newspaper Enterprise Association (a newspaper syndication service) wrote about Chamberlain in a story picked up by several papers in August 1954.
*In high school, he covered the quarter mile in a shade under :49, broke two minutes in the half [mile]. He holds the Pennsylvania high school record for the shotput, heaving the 12-pound weight 54 feet, 9 inches … Marty Glickman, the old Olympic sprinter from Syracuse, took one look at the kid and shook his head. “With a little training,” Glickman observed, “he could make the greatest decathlon man we’ve ever had. Imagine him in the hurdles! He’d take two at once.” Young Chamberlain has a 93 average in school, which obviously shows he has the mental power to be on the chess team, too. And Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain would win any eating contest.* **Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, August 16, 1954**
Chamberlain was recruited by all the top college basketball programs in the country.
*Chamberlain now must stand as the most-bothered high school basketball player in the game’s history. He has had over 200 gilt-edged offers for a free college education. And the kid has been quietly going nuts because of it. “The phone never stops ringing [at] home,” he says. “People always bother me. ‘How would you like to come to this place?’ they’ll ask me. Then five minutes later somebody else is here and he wants me to go to another college. I don’t know what to do. I’m not going to talk to anybody from now on. I’m just tired of it all.”* **Mt Vernon Register-News, Illinois, February 19, 1955**
The following syndicated story was written by Jimmy Breslin, who was just starting out and working for the Newspaper Enterprise Association. He would go on to become a columnist for the New York Daily News, win a Pulitzer Prize and write several bestselling books, including The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.
Breslin described Chamberlain in his story …
*He is a good-looking boy who, if you can see up that far, wears a mustache. His arms are proportionately normal, hanging down to the middle of his thighs – but when he sticks them into the air they look like a couple of bridge towers. His legs are the reason they give him the Stilt nickname.*
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Chamberlain eventually selected the University of Kansas. He was an immediate sensation on and off the basketball court.
*Lawrence, Kas., Sept. 7 – The young man seated on a bleacher row in the new Allen field house here stood up as several other University of Kansas students approached. A look of genuine astonishment flashed across the faces of the students and one of them asked: “you’re Wilt Chamberlain, aren’t you?”*
*It was, really, a slightly silly question, for most obviously, this was Wilt Chamberlain. But Wilt merely smiled and answered quietly: “Yes, I’m Wilt Chamberlain. Glad to meet you, fellas.”*
*The students surveyed young Chamberlain and then one said: “Gee, you are tall, aren’t you?”*
*“Yes, I guess I am,” Chamberlain replied.*
*Soon, the students walked away, still shaking their heads in amazement, and Chamberlain returned to his seat. “I’m sort of used to this sort of thing,” he said. “Lots of people up here introduced themselves to me. I like it.”* **The Kansas City Star, Missouri, September 7, 1955**
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The story goes on to describe Chamberlain’s youth, and growth spurt …
*His father is 5 feet 8 ½ inches tall, his mother is 5 feet 9 ½ inches tall and no one thought much about Wilt turning into a giant until he returned from a 3-month summer trip one year almost four inches taller than he had been before. “Until then,” Wilt relates, “I hadn’t played much basketball. But when I got so tall, the boys began razzing me about not playing so I started fooling around with the game. Until then, I thought it was a game for sissies.”*
Freshmen weren’t allowed to play back then. Chamberlain made his college debut on December 3, 1956, against Northwestern.
*Wilt Chamberlain no longer is just a wild myth. He really is a stringbean shadow of a guy who scores basketball points like a kid gulps chocolate … the final count was 52 points scored and 31 rebounds plucked for the young Philadelphian many believe will become the greatest big man in basketball history.* **Evening Eagle, Wichita, Kansas, December 4, 1956**
Kansas won 87-69. The Jayhawks advanced to the NCAA championship game that year, losing 54-53 to North Carolina in triple overtime. Chamberlain also won three consecutive Big Eight Conference high jump titles. He left Kansas after his junior year, played with the Harlem Globetrotters for a year, then joined the Philadelphia Warriors of the NBA in 1959 and began setting scoring records and changing the game of basketball.
by ar7pr_
