1961-62 NBA Season

Let's travel back in time a few decades, shall we? The NBA season was not 82 games yet but it was at 80, up 1 from a year prior. How a league with only 9 teams managed to play 80 games is interesting enough; that the Knicks were in 4th place in the East with a record of 29-51 is unfathomable unless I told you that there were only 4 teams in the entire Eastern Conference. Now you know. Hershey, Pennsylvania was not famous for Hershey Park and its rides yet, but there was an even awesomer event that made Hershey famous. I'm talking about Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a single game. [Let's take a quick detour here and talk about that game. Something quite ironical happened during that game. Normally, a team facing defeat in the final minutes will play 'hurry-up offense' driving the length of the court and putting up a shot as quickly as possible, and then foul the other team right away in order to stop the clock and hopefully give up only 1 point (if not none) as opposed to 2 or 3. This was not the case against New York that night. The same way there is somewhat of a gameplan for a losing team in the final minutes is there a gameplan for the team that's up: keep the clock running as long as possible / kill time. The exact opposite happened that evening. The Knicks, out of fear of embarrassment that they would give up a buck to Wilt, actually tried killing time themselves despite having a large deficit with time running out. On the other hand, Philly (Warriors) wanted to get the ball to Wilt as quickly as possible allowing him to score, after which they would subsequently foul the Knicks in order to stop the clock so as to give Wilt more time to score a 100. I found that very interesting...now back to the topic at hand.] That same season, the Celtics-Lakers Rivalry was in full swing as Beantown beat the Lakers 4 games to 3 in the championship giving the Celtics their 4th straight championship. Russell was named MVP that season. This was also the year that the "Big O" averaged a triple-double THE ENTIRE SEASON. [Bill Simmons doesn't find it as impressive as everyone makes it out to sound but I still think it's THE ultimate sports record.]

Now these are all amazing feats which are pretty well known in the sports world. There is one ridiculous stat from that season though that I want to put out on the table. It may be less known but I still think it's just as ridiculous. According to Basketball-Reference's stat sheet, Wilt Chamberlain averaged about 50 points a game to go along with 25 rebounds a game. WAIT- I haven't even gotten to the Big Shmopper yet. You ready?....He averaged 48 AND A HALF minutes per game when a game is only 48 minutes in total! I looked at the numbers and did some math and it's actually true! I'm ending all of my sentences now with exclamation points and I can't even stop myself! Wow! [We'll delve into the exclamation point some other time (and its overuse by girls in text messages).] Basically what I'm saying here is that The Stilt played a whole 30 seconds on top of the standard 48-minutes allocated. Did he play that many overtimes that season? Did they add 15 seconds before and after the game just for him to take some extra layups? Maybe that's how he scored 100 points in a single game- who knows?

My point is that I want everybody to know this stat as well as the Trip-Dub by the Big O, the 50-25 season Wilt had, and the famous 100-point marathon run by him.

Maybe I'm making too big of a deal but I had to share it with someone.