Watch CBS News

50th Anniversary Of Wilt Chamberlain's 100-Point Game

By Mike DeNardo

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - On this night 50 years ago, a singular achievement established a record that remains unmatched in professional sports:  Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game.

KYW Newsradio's Bill Campbell, doing Philadelphia Warriors play-by-play for WCAU radio, knew Wilt Chamberlain was doing something special that night in Hershey. The Big Dipper had 41 points at halftime.

But how special? "I wouldn't dare say that I thought he was going to score 100 points. That was the last thing -- it never entered my mind. But, I thought that only because he was making his foul shots -- which he never did! And I figured this guy's going to have -- and I'm thinking out loud, 80, 90 points, because he's making his foul shots!"

When Chamberlain scored 100 with seconds left, Campbell remembers the game stopping as many of the 4100 fans there rushed the court.

"I was really concentrating on the number of points he had. Because I knew that if he did, after it got into the high 80s or something, if he did hit 100 there was going to be an outburst of some kind. There was going to be a reaction of some kind. And I wanted to make sure I didn't say it and I was wrong. So I was really concentrating on my mathematics!"

Campbell says, with the advent of the three-point shot, he thought someone would have dropped a single-triple since then, but no one ever has.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.