YouTube Gold: Astonishing Video From An Astonishing Season By Wilt Chamberlain
It seems like something a cartoon character would do but all of it really happened
In 1957, Frank McGuire led UNC to a remarkable undefeated season, culminated by two three-overtime games in the Final Four, one against Michigan State and the other against Wilt Chamberlain and Kansas.
When McGuire moved on to the NBA to coach the Philadelphia Warriors for the 1961-62 season, he joined forces with Chamberlain and helped him to rewrite the record books.
Lacking much more talent than the Big Dipper, McGuire turned Chamberlain loose: he averaged 50.4 ppg and 25.7 rpg.
This video - well, it has to be film - is unbelievably clear. It’s really amazing to see something this old that’s in this kind of condition. It must have been restored or perhaps just carefully put away. In spots, it’s almost crisp enough to have been taken over the weekend.
You see a lot of the greats from the era here: Wilt, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Sam Jones and others.
One more stat about Chamberlain: we’ve seen various listings of his minutes from 1961-62, with one saying he only missed eight minutes all season. We’ve seen averages from 43.5 to 48.5 mpg.
Whatever the actual number is, for a guy who (at the time) was 7-1 and 250, that’s just as amazing as anything else he did.