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 "highly speculative" and was unsure "whether it makes sense or not." Other reviews were less favourable. New Scientist's deputy editor Graham Lawton characterised Science Set Free as "woolly credulousness" and chided Sheldrake for "uncritically embracing all kinds of fringe ideas." A review in Philosophy Now called the book "disturbingly eccentric," combining "a disorderly collage of scientific fact and opinion with an intrusive yet disjunctive metaphysical programme." Science and Spiritual Practices (2017)
Adam Ford, reviewing the book for the Church Times, says that Sheldrake "takes issue with the new atheism of many scientists, which arises out of a mechanical and materialist view of the universe," arguing that "consciousness and the Spirit are the true fundamental realities of everything." Public reception
Sheldrake's ideas have been discussed in academic journals and books.His work has also received popular coverage through newspapers, radio, television and speaking engagements. The attention he receives has raised concerns that it adversely affects the public understanding of science. Some have accused Sheldrake of self-promotion, with Steven Rose commenting, "for the inventors of such hypotheses the rewards include a degree of instant fame which is harder to achieve by the humdrum pursuit of more conventional science." Academic debate
A variety of responses to Sheldrake's ideas have appeared in prominent scientific publications. Sheldrake and theoretical physicist David Bohm published a dialogue in 1982 in which they compared Sheldrake's ideas to Bohm's implicate order. In 1997, physicist Hans-Peter Dürr speculated about Sheldrake's work in relation to modern physics. Following the publication of A New Science of Life, New Scientist sponsored a competition to devise empirical tests for morphic resonance.The winning idea involved learning Turkish nursery rhymes, with psychologist and broadcaster Sue Blackmore's entry involving babies' behaviour coming second. Blackmore found the results did not support morphic resonance. In 2005, the Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted a special issue to Sheldrake's work on the sense of being stared at. For this issue, the editor could not follow the journal's standard peer review process because "making successful blind peer review a condition of publication would in this case have killed the project at the outset." The issue thus featured several articles by Sheldrake, followed by the open peer-review to which Sheldrake then responded. Writing in Scientific American, Michael Shermer rated the peer commentaries, and noted that the more supportive reviews came from those who had affiliations with less mainstream institutions. Sheldrake denies that DNA contains a recipe for morphological development.He and developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert have made a scientific wager about the importance of DNA in the developing organism. Wolpert bet Sheldrake "a case of fine port" that "By 1 May 2029, given the genome of a fertilised egg of an animal or plant, we will be able to predict in at least one case all the details of the organism that develops from it, including any abnormalities." The Royal Society will be asked to determine the winner if the result is not obvious. "A book for burning?" In September 1981, Nature published an editorial about A New Science of Life entitled "A book for burning?" Written by the journal's senior editor, John Maddox, the editorial commented:

Maddox argued that Sheldrake's hypothesis was not testable or "falsifiable in Popper's sense," referring to the work of philosopher Karl Popper. He said Sheldrake's proposals for testing his hypothesis were "time-consuming, inconclusive in the sense that it will always be possible to account for another morphogenetic field and impractical."In the editorial, Maddox ultimately rejected the suggestion that the book should be burned. Nonetheless, the title of the piece garnered widespread publicity. In a subsequent issue, Nature published several letters expressing disapproval of the editorial, including one from physicist Brian Josephson, who criticised Maddox for "a failure to admit even the possibility that genuine physical facts may exist which lie outside the scope of current scientific descriptions." In 1983, an editorial in The Guardian compared the "petulance of wrath of the scientific establishment" aimed against Sheldrake with the Galileo affair and Lysenkoism. Responding in the same paper, Brian Charlesworth defended the scientific establishment, affirming that "the ultimate test of a scientific theory is its conformity with the observations and experiments" and that "vitalistic and Lamarckian ideas which [The Guardian] seem to regard so highly have repeatedly failed this test." In a letter to The Guardian in 1988, a scientist from Glasgow University referred to the title "A book for burning?" as "posing the question to attract attention" and criticised the "perpetuation of the myth that Maddox ever advocated the burning of Sheldrake's book."In 1999, Maddox characterised his 1981 editorial as "injudicious," saying that even though it concluded that Sheldrake's book

... should not be burned ... but put firmly in its place among the literature of intellectual aberration. ... The publicists for Sheldrake's publishers were nevertheless delighted with the piece, using it to suggest that the Establishment (Nature) was again up to its old trick of suppressing uncomfortable truths." An editor for Nature said in 2009 that Maddox's reference to book burning backfired. In 2012, Sheldrake described his experiences after publication of Maddox's editorial review as being "exactly like a papal excommunication. From that moment on, I became a very dangerous person to know for scientists." Sheldrake and Steven Rose
During 1987 and 1988 Sheldrake contributed several pieces to The Guardian's "Body and Soul" column.In one of these, he wrote that the idea that "memories were stored in our brains" was "only a theory" and "despite decades of research, the phenomenon of memory remains mysterious." This provoked a response by Steven Rose, a neuroscientist from the Open University, who criticised Sheldrake for being "a researcher trained in another discipline" (botany) for not "respect[ing] the data collected by neuroscientists before begin[ning] to offer us alternative explanations," and accused Sheldrake of "ignoring or denying" "massive evidence," and arguing that "neuroscience over the past two decades has shown that memories are stored in specific changes in brain cells." Giving an example of experiments on chicks, Rose asserted "egregious errors that Sheldrake makes to bolster his case that demands a new vague but all-embracing theory to resolve." Sheldrake responded to Rose's article, stating that there was experimental evidence that showed that "memories can survive the destruction of the putative memory traces." Rose responded, asking Sheldrake to "get his facts straight," explaining the research and concluding that "there is no way that this straightforward and impressive body of evidence can be taken to imply that memories are not in the brain, still less that the brain is tuning into some indeterminate, undefined, resonating and extra-corporeal field." In his next column, Sheldrake again attacked Rose for following "materialism," and argued that quantum physics had "overturned" materialism, and suggested that "memories may turn out to depend on morphic resonance rather than memory traces." Philosopher Alan Malachowski of the University of East Anglia, responding to what he called Sheldrake's "latest muddled diatribe," defended materialism, argued that Sheldrake dismissed Rose's explanation with an "absurd rhetorical comparison," asserted that quantum physics was compatible with materialism and argued that "being roughly right about great many things has given [materialists] the confidence to be far more open minded than he is prepared to give them credit for."They subsequently agreed to and arranged a test of the morphic resonance hypothesis using chicks. Sheldrake published his paper stating that the results matched his prediction that day-old chicks would be influenced by the experiences of previous batches of day-old chicks. "From the point of view of the hypothesis of formative causation, the results of this experiment are encouraging" and called for further research. Rose published separately, stating that morphic resonance was a "hypothesis disconfirmed." He also made further criticisms of morphic resonance, and stated that "the experience of this collaboration has convinced me in practice, Sheldrake is so committed to his hypothesis that it is very hard to envisage the circumstances in which he would accept its disconfirmation." Rose asked Patrick Bateson to analyse the data, and Bateson offered his opinion that Sheldrake's interpretation of the data was "misleading" and attributable to experimenter effects. Sheldrake responded to Rose's paper by describing it as "polemic" and "aggressive tone and extravagant rhetoric" and concluding that "The results of this experiment do not disconfirm the hypothesis of formative causation, as Rose claims.They are consistent with it." On television
Sheldrake was the subject of an episode of Heretics of Science, a six-part documentary series broadcast on BBC2 in 1994. In this episode, John Maddox discussed "A book for burning?," his 1981 Nature editorial review of Sheldrake's book, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance. Maddox said that morphic resonance "is not a scientific theory. Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned with exactly the language that the popes used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reasons: it is heresy." The broadcast repeatedly displayed footage of book burning, sometimes accompanied by audio of a crowd chanting "heretic." Biologist Steven Rose criticised the broadcast for focusing on Maddox's rhetoric as if it was "all that mattered.""There wasn't much sense of the scientific or metascientific issues at stake," Rose said. An experiment involving measuring the time for subjects to recognise hidden images, with morphic resonance being posited to aid in recognition, was conducted in 1984 by the BBC popular science programme Tomorrow's World. In the outcome of the experiment, one set of data yielded positive results and another set yielded negative results. Public debates and lectures
Sheldrake debated with biologist Lewis Wolpert on the existence of telepathy in 2004 at the Royal Society of Arts in London. Sheldrake argued for telepathy while Wolpert argued that telepathy fits Irving Langmuir's definition of pathological science and that the evidence for telepathy has not been persuasive. Reporting on the event, New Scientist said "it was clear the audience saw Wolpert as no more than a killjoy. (...) There are sound reasons for doubting Sheldrake's data.One is that some parapsychology experimenters have an uncanny knack of finding the effect they are looking for. There is no suggestion of fraud, but something is going on, and science demands that it must be understood before conclusions can be drawn about the results." In 2006, Sheldrake spoke at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science about experimental results on telepathy replicated by "a 1980s girl band," drawing criticism from Peter Atkins, Lord Winston, and Richard Wiseman. The Royal Society also reacted to the event saying, "Modern science is based on a rigorous evidence-based process involving experiment and observation. The results and interpretations should always be exposed to robust peer review." In April 2008, Sheldrake was stabbed by a man during a lecture in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The man told a reporter that he thought Sheldrake had been using him as a "guinea pig" in telepathic mind control experiments for over five years.Sheldrake suffered a wound to the leg and has since recovered, while his assailant was found "guilty but mentally ill."

In January 2013, Sheldrake gave a TEDx lecture at TEDxWhitechapel in East London roughly summarising ideas from his book, The Science Delusion. In his talk, Sheldrake stated that modern science rests on ten dogmas which "fall apart" upon examination and promoted his hypothesis of morphic resonance. According to a statement issued by TED staff, TED's scientific advisors "questioned whether his list is a fair description of scientific assumptions" and believed that "there is little evidence for some of Sheldrake's more radical claims, such as his theory of morphic resonance." The advisors recommended that the talk "should not be distributed without being framed with caution." The video of the talk was moved from the TEDx YouTube channel to the TED blog accompanied by the framing language called for by the advisors. The move and framing prompted accusations of censorship, to which TED responded by saying the accusations were "simply not true" and that Sheldrake's talk was "up on our website." In November 2013, Sheldrake gave a lecture at the Oxford Union outlining his claims, made in The Science Delusion, that modern science has become constrained by dogma, particularly in physics.In popular culture
Between 1989 and 1999, Sheldrake, ethnobotanist Terence McKenna and mathematician Ralph Abraham recorded a series of discussions exploring diverse topics relating to the "world soul" and evolution. These also resulted in a number of books based on these discussions: Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, Creativity and the Resacralization of the World (1992), The Evolutionary Mind: Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable (1998), and The Evolutionary Mind: Conversations on Science, Imagination & Spirit (2005). In an interview for the book Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, Sheldrake states he believes the use of psychedelic drugs "can reveal a world of consciousness and interconnection" which he says he has experienced. Alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra has been a notable supporter of Sheldrake's work. Sheldrake's work was amongst those cited in a faux research paper written by Alan Sokal and submitted to Social Text. In 1996, the journal published the paper as if it represented real scientific research, an event which has come to be known as the Sokal affair. Sokal later said that he had suggested in the hoax paper that 'morphogenetic fields' constituted a cutting-edge theory of quantum gravity, adding that "This connection [was] pure invention; even Sheldrake makes no such claim."Sheldrake has been described as a New Age author although he does not endorse certain New Age interpretations of his ideas. Origin and philosophy of morphic resonance
Among his early influences Sheldrake cites The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by Thomas Kuhn. Sheldrake says that the book led him to view contemporary scientific understanding of life as simply a paradigm, which he called "the mechanistic theory of life." Reading Kuhn's work, Sheldrake says, focused his mind on how scientific paradigms can change. Sheldrake says that although there are similarities between morphic resonance and Hinduism's akashic records, he first conceived of the idea while at Cambridge, before his travel to India where he later developed it. He attributes the origin of his morphic resonance idea to two influences: his studies of the holistic tradition in biology, and French philosopher Henri Bergson's 1896 book Matter and Memory. He says that he took Bergson's concept of memories not being materially embedded in the brain and generalised it to morphic resonance, where memories are not only immaterial but also under the influence of the collective past memories of similar organisms.While his colleagues at Cambridge were not receptive to the idea, Sheldrake found the opposite to be true in India. He recounts his Indian colleagues saying, "There's nothing new in this, it was all known millennia ago to the ancient rishis." Sheldrake thus characterises morphic resonance as a convergence between Western and Eastern thought, yet found by himself first in Western philosophy. Sheldrake has also noted similarities between morphic resonance and Carl Jung's collective unconscious, with regard to collective memories being shared across individuals and the coalescing of particular behaviours through repetition, described by Jung as archetypes. However, whereas Jung assumed that archetypal forms were transmitted through physical inheritance, Sheldrake attributes collective memories to morphic resonance, and rejects any explanation of them involving what he terms "mechanistic biology." Lewis Wolpert, one of Sheldrake's critics, has described morphic resonance as being an updated Drieschian vitalism. Books
 A New Science of Life: the hypothesis of formative causation, Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1981 (second edition 1985, third edition 2009). .The Presence of the Past: morphic resonance and the habits of nature, New York: Times Books, 1988. . The Rebirth of Nature: The greening of science and God, New York: Bantam Books, 1991. . Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: a do-it-yourself guide to revolutionary science, New York: Riverhead Books, 1995. . Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home: and other unexplained powers of animals, New York: Crown, 1999 (second edition 2011). . The Sense of Being Stared At: and other aspects of the extended mind, New York: Crown Publishers, 2003. . The Science Delusion: Freeing the spirit of enquiry, London: Coronet, 2012. (U. S. Title: Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery).Science and Spiritual Practices, London: Coronet, 2017. Ways To Go Beyond, And Why They Work: Seven Spiritual Practices in a Scientific Age, London: Coronet, 2019. .
With Ralph Abraham and Terence McKenna:
 Trialogues at the Edge of the West: chaos, creativity, and the resacralisation of the world, Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co. Pub., 1992. . The Evolutionary Mind: trialogues at the edge of the unthinkable, Santa Cruz, CA: Dakota Books, 1997. . Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness, Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2001. . The Evolutionary Mind: Conversations on Science, Imagination & Spirit, Rhinebeck, NY: Monkfish Book Pub. Co., 2005. .
With Matthew Fox:
 Natural Grace: dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science, New York: Doubleday, 1996. .The Physics of Angels: exploring the realm where science and spirit meet, San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996. .
With Kate Banks:
 Boy's Best Friend, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. .
With Michael Shermer:
 Arguing Science: A Dialogue on the Future of Science and Spirit'', Rhinebeck, NY: Farrar, Monkfish Books, 2016. .

See also
 Fritjof Capra
 Hundredth monkey effect
 Noosphere
 Philosophy of science
 Synchronicity
 Lyall Watson

Explanatory notes

References

External links

1942 births
Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge
British biologists
British male writers
British non-fiction writers
English Anglicans
English writers on paranormal topics
Living people
Male non-fiction writers
Parapsychologists
People educated at Worksop College
People from Newark-on-Trent
Pseudoscientific


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<mask> (27 October 1931 – 6 October 2019) was an Irish hurler who played for club sides Tullaroan and Young Irelands. He played for the Kilkenny senior hurling team for a decade, during which time he lined out in a variety of positions including left corner-forward, left wing-forward and midfield. Born in Tullaroan, County Kilkenny, Clohosey first arrived on the inter-county scene at the age of sixteen when he first linked up with the Kilkenny minor team. He made his senior debut during the 1953 championship. During his career Clohosey won two All-Ireland medals, five Leinster medals and one National Hurling League medal. He was an All-Ireland runner-up on one occasion. Clohosey also represented the Leinster inter-provincial team on a number of occasions, winning one Railway Cup medal.At club level he was a one-time championship medallist with Tullaroan. His retirement came following Kilkenny's victory over Waterford in the 1963 All-Ireland final. Clohosey's father, Pat, also enjoyed a length career with Kilkenny. Playing career

Tullaroan

<mask> joined the Tullaroan club at a young age and played in all grades at juvenile and underage levels before eventually joining the club's top adult team in the Kilkenny Senior Championship. On 31 August 1952, <mask> lined out at right wing-forward when Tullaroan qualified to play Bennettsbridge in the Kilkenny Senior Championship final. He scored two goals from play but ended on the losing side after suffering a 5-3 to 4-05 defeat. <mask> was selected at midfield when Tullaroan qualified for a meeting with Slieverue in the final on 10 October 1954.He was held scoreless and ended the game on the losing side after suffering a 6-05 to 4-03 defeat. On 2 November 1958, <mask> was selected at centre-forward when he lined out in a third final. He scored two points from play and claimed a winners' medal after Tullaroan's 1-12 to 3-02 defeat of Bennettsbridge. Kilkenny

Minor

<mask> was just 16-years-old when he was selected for the Kilkenny minor team for the first time during the 1948 Leinster Championship. He won a Leinster Championship medal as a member of the extended panel on 11 July 1948 following Kilkenny's 5-02 to 3-06 defeat of Offaly in the final. <mask> was again a member of the extended panel when Kilkenny suffered a 3-08 to 4-02 defeat by Waterford in the All-Ireland final on 5 September 1948. On 15 May 1949, <mask> made his first appearance for the Kilkenny minor team.He scored 1-01 from play in a 1-03 to 0-05 defeat of Wexford in the Leinster Championship. <mask>, who was then based as a bank official in Killorglin, County Kerry, was later dropped from the team due to the difficulty with travel arrangements in getting him to games. Senior

<mask> was added to the Kilkenny senior team during the 1952-53 National League. He made his Leinster Championship debut on 21 June 1953 and scored a point from play in a 3-11 to 4-08 draw with Dublin. <mask> won a Leinster Championship medal on 19 July 1953 when he again scored a point in the 1-13 to 3-05 defeat of Wexford in the final. On 2 May 1954, <mask> lined out at right wing-forward when Kilkenny faced Tipperary in the National League final. He ended the game on the losing side after a 3-10 to 1-04 defeat.<mask> lined out in a second Leinster final on 17 July 1955. He top scored for Kilkenny with 1-01 in the 2-07 apiece draw with Wexford. Clohesy was again Kilkenny's top scorer with 1-02 for the replay on 31 July 1955, however, he ended the game on the losing side after a 5-06 to 3-09 defeat. On 8 July 1956, <mask> was selected at centre-forward when Kilkenny faced Wexford in a second successive Leinster final. He scored a point from play in the 4-08 to 3-10 defeat. <mask> was selected at left corner-forward when he lined out in his second National League final on 12 May 1957. He ended the game on the losing side after a 3-11 to 2-07 defeat by Tipperary.On 4 August 1957, <mask> won his second Leinster medal after scoring 2-01 in the 6-09 to 1-05 defeat of Wexford in the final. He was again selected at left corner-forward when Kilkenny faced Waterford in the All-Ireland final on 1 September 1957. <mask> scored two points from play and claimed a winners' medal following the 4-10 to 3-12 victory. <mask> was named at left corner-forward when Kilkenny faced Wexford in a fourth successive Leinster final on 27 July 1958. He scored two points from play and claimed a third Leinster medal following the 5-12 to 4-09 victory. <mask> was appointed captain of the Kilkenny team for the 1959 season. He won a fourth Leinster medal on 12 July 1959 after captaining the team to a 2-09 to 1-11 defeat of Dublin in the final.On 6 September 1959, <mask> captained Kilkenny to an All-Ireland final meeting with Waterford. He scored a point from play in the 5-05 to 1-17 draw. <mask> was again at left wing-forward for the replay on 4 October 1959, however, he ended the game on the losing side after suffering a 3-12 to 1-10 defeat. On 24 July 1960, <mask> was selected at midfield when Kilkenny faced Wexford in the Leinster final. He was held scoreless throughout and ended the game on the losing side following a 3-10 to 2-11 defeat. On 6 May 1962, <mask> was at full-forward when Kilkenny qualified to play Cork in the National League final. He scored a point from play and claimed a winners' medal following the 1-16 to 1-08 victory and a first league title for Kilkenny since 1933.<mask> was again at full-forward when Kilkenny faced Wexford in the Leinster final on 22 July 1962. He scored a point from play in the 3-09 to 2-10 defeat. <mask> lined out in a ninth Leinster final on 21 July 1963. He scored 1-01 from right wing-forward and claimed a fifth winners' medal after the 2-10 to 0-09 defeat of Dublin. On 1 September 1963, <mask> lined out at midfield when Kilkenny faced Waterford in the All-Ireland final. He ended the game with a second All-Ireland medal All-Ireland medal after the 4-17 to 6-08 victory. Honours

Team

Tullaroan
Kilkenny Senior Hurling Championship (1): 1958

Kilkenny
All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship (2): 1957, 1963
Leinster Senior Hurling Championship (5): 1953, 1957, 1958, 1959 (c), 1963
National Hurling League (1): 1961–62

Leinster
Railway Cup (1): 1956

References

1931 births
2019 deaths
Tullaroan hurlers
Kilkenny inter-county hurlers
Leinster inter-provincial hurlers
All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship winners

masks:
Seán Clohosey
Clohessy
Clohessy
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Clohessy
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<mask> (; August 21, 1936 – October 12, 1999) was an American professional basketball player who played as a center, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the sport's history. He played for the Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played for the University of Kansas and for the Harlem Globetrotters before playing in the NBA. <mask> stood  tall. <mask> holds numerous NBA regular season records in scoring, rebounding, and durability categories. He is the only player to score 100 points in a single NBA game or average more than 40 and 50 points in a season. He won seven scoring, eleven rebounding, nine durability, and nine field goal percentage titles, and led the league in assists once.<mask> is the only player in NBA history to average at least 30 points and 20 rebounds per game in a season, which he accomplished seven times. He is also the only player to average at least 30 points and 20 rebounds per game over the entire course of his NBA career. Although <mask> suffered a long string of NBA Finals losses during his career, he had a successful career, winning two NBA championships, earning four regular-season NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards, the NBA Rookie of the Year award, one NBA Finals MVP award, and was selected to 13 NBA All-Star Game and ten All-NBA First and Second teams. <mask> was subsequently enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, elected into the NBA's 35th Anniversary Team of 1980, and was chosen as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996. In October 2021, <mask> was named to the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team. <mask> was known by several nicknames during his basketball playing career. He disliked the ones that called attention to his height, such as "Goliath" and "Wilt the Stilt".A Philadelphia sportswriter coined the nicknames during <mask>'s high school days. He preferred "The Big Dipper", which was inspired by his friends who saw him dip his head as he walked through doorways. After his professional basketball career ended, <mask> played volleyball in the short-lived International Volleyball Association, was president of that organization, and is enshrined in the IVA Hall of Fame for his contributions. He was a successful businessman, authored several books, and appeared in the movie Conan the Destroyer. <mask> was also a lifelong bachelor and became notorious for his statement of having had sexual relations with as many as 20,000 women. Early years
<mask> was born on August 21, 1936 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into a family of nine children, the son of Olivia Ruth Johnson, a domestic worker and homemaker, and <mask>, a welder, custodian, and handyman. He was a frail child, nearly dying of pneumonia in his early years and missing a whole year of school as a result.In his early years, <mask> was not interested in basketball because he thought it was "a game for sissies." As an avid track and field athlete, <mask> high jumped 6 feet, 6 inches; ran the 440 yards in 49.0 seconds and the 880 yards in 1:58.3; put the shot 53 feet, 4 inches; and long jumped 22 feet. According to <mask>, "basketball was king in Philadelphia", so he eventually turned to the sport. Because <mask> was a very tall child, already measuring  at age 10 and  when he entered Philadelphia's Overbrook High School, he had a natural advantage against his peers; he soon was renowned for his scoring talent, his physical strength and his shot blocking abilities. According to ESPN journalist Hal Bock, <mask> was "scary, flat-out frightening ... before he came along, very few players at the center position possessed his level of athleticism, stature, and stamina. <mask> changed the game in fundamental ways no other player did." It was also in this period of his life when his three lifelong nicknames "Wilt the Stilt", "Goliath", and his favorite, "The Big Dipper", were allegedly born.High school career
As the star player for the Overbrook Panthers, <mask> averaged 31 points a game during the 1953 high school season and led his team to a 71–62 win over Northeast High School, who had Guy Rodgers, <mask>'s future NBA teammate. He scored 34 points as Overbrook won the Public League title and gained a berth in the Philadelphia city championship game against the winner of the rival Catholic league, West Catholic. In that game, West Catholic quadruple-teamed <mask> the entire game, and despite his 29 points, the Panthers lost 54–42. In his second Overbrook season, he continued his prolific scoring when he tallied a high school record 71 points against Roxborough. The Panthers comfortably won the Public League title after again beating Northeast in which <mask> scored 40 points, and later won the city title by defeating South Catholic 74–50. He scored 32 points and led Overbrook to a 19–0 season. During summer vacations, he worked as a bellhop in Kutsher's Hotel.Subsequently, owners Milton and Helen Kutsher kept up a lifelong friendship with <mask>; according to their son Mark, "[t]hey were his second set of parents." Red Auerbach, the coach of the Boston Celtics, spotted the talented teenager at Kutscher's and had him play one-on-one against University of Kansas standout and national champion, B. H. Born, elected the Most Outstanding Player of the 1953 NCAA Finals. As <mask> won 25–10, Born was so dejected that he gave up a promising NBA career and became a tractor engineer, recalling: "If there were high school kids that good, I figured I wasn't going to make it to the pros." Auerbach wanted him to go to a New England university, so he could draft him as a territorial pick for the Celtics, but <mask> did not respond. In <mask>'s third and final Overbrook season, he continued his high scoring, logging 74, 78, and 90 points in three consecutive games. The Panthers won the Public League a third time, beating West Philadelphia 78–60, and in the city championship game, they met West Catholic once again. Scoring 35 points, <mask> led Overbrook to an easy 83–42 victory.After three years, <mask> had led Overbrook to two city championships, logged a 56–3 record and broken Tom Gola's high school scoring record by scoring 2,252 points, averaging 37.4 points per game. After his last Overbrook season, more than two hundred universities tried to recruit the basketball prodigy. Among others, UCLA offered <mask> the opportunity to become a movie star, the University of Pennsylvania wanted to buy him diamonds, and <mask>'s Panthers coach Mosenson was even offered a coaching position if he could persuade him. In his 2004 biography of <mask>, Robert Cherry describes that <mask> wanted a change and therefore did not want to go to or near Philadelphia (also eliminating New York), was not interested in New England, and snubbed the South because of racial segregation; this left the Midwest as <mask>'s probable choice. In the end, after visiting the University of Kansas and conferring with the school's renowned college coach Phog Allen, <mask> proclaimed that he was going to play college basketball at Kansas. At the ages of 16 and 17, <mask> played several professional games under the pseudonym George Marcus. There were contemporary reports of the games in Philadelphia publications, but he tried to keep them secret from the Amateur Athletic Union.College career
In 1955, <mask> entered the University of Kansas (KU). In his first year, he played for the Kansas Jayhawks freshman team under coach Phog Allen, whom he admired. <mask> was also a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, where he was the president of his pledge class. <mask>'s freshman debut was highly anticipated, and he delivered; the freshman squad was pitted against the varsity, who were favored to win their conference that year. <mask> dominated his older college teammates by scoring 42 points (16–35 from the field, 10–12 on free throws), grabbing 29 rebounds, and registering four blocks. <mask>'s prospects of playing under Allen ended when the coach turned 70 shortly after and retired in accordance with KU regulations. <mask> had a bad relationship with Allen's successor, Dick Harp, fueled by resentment and disappointment.<mask> biographer Robert Cherry doubts whether <mask> would have chosen KU if he had known that Allen was going to retire. On December 3, 1956, <mask> made his varsity debut as a center. In his first game, he scored 52 points and grabbed 31 rebounds, breaking both all-time Kansas records in an 87–69 win against Northwestern, who had <mask>'s future NBA teammate Joe Ruklick. Teammate Monte Johnson testified to his athleticism that <mask> had "unbelievable endurance and speed ... and was never tired. When he dunked, he was so fast that a lot of players got their fingers jammed [between <mask>'s hand and the rim]." Reportedly, <mask> also broke Johnny Kerr's toe with a slam dunk. By this time, he had developed several offensive weapons that became his trademarks, such as his finger roll, his fade-away jump shot, which he could also hit as a bank shot, his passing, and his shot-blocking.Leading a talented squad of starters, including Maurice King, Gene Elstun, John Parker, Ron Lonesky, and Lew Johnson, the Jayhawks went 13–1 until they lost a game 56–54 versus Oklahoma State, who held the ball the last three and a half minutes without any intention of scoring a basket, which was still possible in the days before the shot clock (introduced 1984 in the NCAA). As he did at Overbrook, <mask> again showcased his diverse athletic talent. He ran the 100-yard dash in 10.9 seconds, shot-putted 56 feet, triple jumped more than 50 feet, and won the high jump in the Big Eight Conference track and field championships three straight years. In 1957, 23 teams were selected to play in the NCAA Tournament. The Midwest Regional was held in Dallas, Texas, which at the time was segregated. In the first game, the Jayhawks played the all-white SMU team, and KU player John Parker later said: "The crowd was brutal. We were spat on, pelted with debris, and subjected to the vilest racial epithets possible."KU won 73–65 in overtime, after which police had to escort the Jayhawks out. The next game against Oklahoma City was equally unpleasant, with KU winning 81–61 under intense racist abuse. In the semi-finals, <mask>'s Jayhawks handily defeated the two-time defending national champion San Francisco 80–56, with <mask> scoring 32 points, grabbing 11 rebounds, and having at least seven blocked shots, as the game film is unclear whether an 8th block occurred, or the ball just fell short due to <mask>'s withering defensive intimidation. <mask> demonstrated his growing arsenal of offensive moves, including jump shots, put-backs, tip-ins, and his turnaround jump shot. He was far more comfortable and effective at the foul line than he would later be during his professional career. He had outstanding foot speed throughout the game, and several times led the fast break, including blocking a shot near the basket and then outracing the field for a layup. His stellar performance led Kansas to an insurmountable lead, and he rested on the bench for the final 3:45 remaining in the game.<mask> was named on the first-team All-America squad and led the Jayhawks into the NCAA finals against the North Carolina Tar Heels. In that game, Tar Heels coach Frank McGuire used several unorthodox tactics to thwart <mask>. For the tip-off, he sent his shortest player, Tommy Kearns, in order to rattle <mask>, and the Tar Heels spent the rest of the night triple-teaming him, one defender in front, one behind, and a third arriving as soon as he got the ball. With their fixation on <mask>, the Jayhawks shot only 27% from the field, as opposed to 64% of the Tar Heels, and trailed 22–29 at halftime. Later, North Carolina led 40–37 with 10 minutes to go and stalled the game, as they passed the ball around without any intention of scoring a basket. After several Tar Heel turnovers, the game was tied at 46 at the end of regulation. In the first overtime each team scored two points, and in the second overtime, Kansas froze the ball in return, keeping the game tied at 48.In the third overtime, the Tar Heels scored two consecutive baskets, but <mask> executed a three-point play, leaving KU trailing 52–51. After King scored a basket, Kansas was ahead by one point, but then Tar Heel Joe Quigg was fouled on a drive with 10 seconds remaining and made his two foul shots. For the final play, Dick Harp called for Ron Loneski to pass the ball into <mask> in the low post, but the pass was intercepted and the Tar Heels won the game. In spite of his loss, <mask>, who scored 23 points and 14 rebounds, was elected the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. Cherry speculates that this loss was a watershed in <mask>'s life because it was the first time that his team lost despite him putting up impressive individual stats. He later admitted that this loss was the most painful of his life. In <mask>'s junior year of 1957–58, the Jayhawks' matches were even more frustrating for him.Knowing how dominant he was, the opponents resorted to freeze-ball tactics and routinely used three or more players to guard him. Teammate Bob Billings commented: "It was not fun basketball ... we were just out chasing people throwing the basketball back and forth." Nevertheless, <mask> averaged 30.1 points for the season and led the Jayhawks to an 18–5 record, losing three games while he was out with a urinary infection. Because KU came second in the league and at the time only conference winners were invited to the NCAA tourney, the Jayhawks' season ended. It was a small consolation that he was again named an All-American, along with future NBA Hall-of-Famers Elgin Baylor and Oscar Robertson, plus old rival Guy Rodgers. Having lost the enjoyment from NCAA basketball and wanting to earn money, he left college and sold the story named "Why I Am Leaving College" to Look magazine for $10,000, a large sum when NBA players earned $9,000 in a whole season. In two seasons at KU, he averaged 29.9 points and 18.3 rebounds per game, while totaling 1,433 points and 877 rebounds, and led Kansas to one Big Seven championship.By the time <mask> was 21, even before he turned professional, he had already been featured in Time, Life, Look, and Newsweek magazines. For many years following <mask>'s departure from KU, critics claimed that he either wanted to leave the very white Midwest or was embarrassed by not being able to bring home the NCAA basketball tournament victory. In 1998, <mask> returned to Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kansas, to participate in a jersey-retiring ceremony for his No. 13. Around this time, he has been quoted as saying: "There's been a lot of conversation, since people have been trying to get my jersey number retired, that I have some dislike for the University of Kansas. That is totally ridiculous." Professional career

Harlem Globetrotters (1958–1959)
After his frustrating junior year, <mask> wanted to become a professional player before finishing his senior year.At that time, the NBA did not accept players until after their college graduating class had been completed, therefore <mask> was prohibited from joining the NBA for a year, and decided to play for the Harlem Globetrotters in 1958 for a sum of $50,000 (equal to about $ in 2019). <mask> became a member of the Globetrotters team that made history by playing in Moscow in 1959; the team enjoyed a sold-out tour of the Soviet Union. Prior to the start of a game at Moscow's Lenin Central Stadium, they were greeted by General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. One particular Globetrotter skit involved Globetrotter captain Meadowlark Lemon collapsing to the ground, and instead of helping him up, <mask> threw him several feet high up in the air and caught him like a doll. The 210-pound Lemon later recounted how <mask> was "the strongest athlete who ever lived." In later years, <mask> frequently joined the Globetrotters in the off-season and fondly recalled his time there, because he was no longer jeered at or asked to break records, but just one of several artists who loved to entertain the crowd. On March 9, 2000, his No.13 was retired by the Globetrotters. Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors (1959–1965)
On October 24, 1959, <mask> finally made his NBA debut, starting for the Philadelphia Warriors. <mask> immediately became the NBA's highest paid player, when he signed for $30,000 (equal to about $ today) in his rookie contract. In comparison, the previous top earner was Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics with $25,000; in fact, Eddie Gottlieb bought the whole Warriors franchise for $25,000 seven years earlier. 1959–60 NBA season

In the 1959–60 NBA season, <mask> joined a Warriors squad that was coached by Neil Johnston and included Hall-of-Fame guards Tom Gola and Paul Arizin, plus Ernie Beck and his old rival, Guy Rodgers;

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 remarkably, all five starters were Philadelphians. In his first NBA game, against the New York Knicks, the rookie center scored 43 points and grabbed 28 rebounds. In his third game, <mask> recorded 41 points and a then-career-high 40 rebounds in a 124–113 win over the visiting Syracuse Nationals.In his fourth game, Philadelphia met the reigning champions, the Boston Celtics of Hall-of-Fame coach Red Auerbach, whose offer he had snubbed several years before, and Bill Russell, who was now lauded as one of the best defensive pivots in the game. In what was the first of many <mask> match-ups, <mask> outscored Russell with 30 points versus 28 points, but Boston won the game. <mask> and his perennial nemesis would grow to become one of the NBA's greatest on-court rivalries of all time. Nevertheless, the two also became friends off the court, similar to later rivals Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. On November 10, 1959, <mask> recorded 39 points and a new career-high 43 rebounds in a 126–125 win over the visiting New York Knicks. On January 25, 1960, <mask> recorded a rare feat in the NBA, recording 50 points, and 40 rebounds in an NBA game. During a game against the Detroit Pistons, <mask> recorded 58 points, 42 rebounds, and 4 assists in a winning effort.His 58 points were a then-career-high for him. He later tied that on February 21, as he recorded 58 points to go along with 24 rebounds in a 131–121 over the visiting Knicks. In his first NBA season, <mask> averaged 37.6 points and 27 rebounds, convincingly breaking the previous regular-season records as a rookie. He needed only 56 games to score 2,102 points, which broke the all-time regular-season scoring record of Bob Pettit, who needed 72 games to score 2,101 points. <mask> broke eight NBA records, and was named NBA MVP and Rookie of the Year that season, a feat matched only by fellow Hall-of-Famer Wes Unseld in the 1968–69 NBA season. <mask> capped off his rookie season by winning the 1960 NBA All-Star Game and the NBA All-Star Game MVP award with a 23-point, 25-rebound performance for the East; it also became evident that he was an atrocious free-throw shooter, making hardly half of his foul shots. As time progressed, <mask> grew even worse, and acknowledged he was simply "a psycho case" on that matter.The Warriors entered the 1960 NBA playoffs and beat the Syracuse Nationals, setting up a meeting versus the Eastern Division champions, the Boston Celtics. Cherry described how Celtics coach Red Auerbach ordered his forward Tom Heinsohn to commit personal fouls on <mask>; whenever the Warriors shot foul shots, Heinsohn grabbed and shoved <mask> to prevent him from running back quickly. His intention was that the Celtics would throw the ball in so fast that the prolific shotblocker <mask> was not yet back under his own basket, and Boston could score an easy fastbreak basket. The teams split the first two games, but <mask> got fed up with Heinsohn and punched him during Game 3. In the scuffle, <mask> injured his hand, and Philadelphia lost the next two games. In Game 5, with his hand healthy, <mask> recorded 50 points and 35 rebounds in a 128–107 win over the Celtics, extending the series to a Game 6. As of the end of the 2019 playoffs, he is the first and the only player in NBA history to record 50 points and 35 rebounds in a playoff game.In Game 6, Heinsohn got the last laugh, scoring the decisive basket with a last-second tip-in. The Warriors lost the series 4–2. The rookie <mask> then shocked Warriors' fans by saying he was thinking of retiring. He was tired of being double- and triple-teamed, and of teams coming down on him with hard fouls. <mask> feared he might lose his cool one day. Celtics forward Heinsohn said: "Half the fouls against him were hard fouls ... he took the most brutal pounding of any player ever." In addition, <mask> was seen as a freak of nature, jeered at by the fans and scorned by the media.As <mask> often said, quoting coach Alex Hannum's explanation of his situation: "Nobody loves Goliath." Gottlieb coaxed <mask> back into the NBA, sweetening his return with a salary raise to $65,000 (equal to about $ today). 1960–61 NBA season
<mask>'s 1960–61 NBA season started with a 42-point and 31-rebound performance in a 133–123 road win against the Syracuse Nationals. On November 24, 1960, <mask> grabbed an NBA-record 55 rebounds to go along with 34 points and 4 assists in a game against the Bill Russell led-Boston Celtics. Five days later, <mask> recorded 44 points, 38 rebounds, and a career-high 7 assists in a 122–121 win over the Los Angeles Lakers. <mask> surpassed his rookie season statistics, as he averaged 38.4 points and 27.2 rebounds per game. He became the first player to break the 3,000-point barrier, and the first and still only player to break the 2,000-rebound barrier for a single season, grabbing 2,149 boards.<mask> also won his first field goal percentage title, and set the all-time record for rebounds in a single game with 55. <mask> was so dominant on the team that he scored almost 32% of his team's points and collected 30.4% of their rebounds. <mask> failed to convert his play into team success, this time bowing out against the Syracuse Nationals in a three-game sweep. Cherry noted that <mask> was "difficult" and did not respect coach Neil Johnston, who was unable to handle the star center. In retrospect, Gottlieb remarked: "My mistake was not getting a strong-handed coach. ... [Johnston] wasn't ready for big time." 1961–62 NBA season
In <mask>'s third season, the Warriors were coached by Frank McGuire, the coach who had masterminded <mask>'s painful NCAA loss against the Tar Heels.In that year, <mask> set several all-time records which have never been threatened. In the 1961–62 NBA season, he averaged 50.4 points and grabbed 25.7 rebounds per game. On March 2, 1962, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, he scored 100 points, shot 36 of 63 from the field, and made 28 of 32 free throws against the New York Knicks. <mask>'s 4,029 regular-season points made him the only player to break the 4,000-point barrier; the only other player to break the 3,000-point barrier is Michael Jordan, with 3,041 points in the 1986–87 NBA season. <mask> once again broke the 2,000-rebound barrier with 2,052. Additionally, he was on the hardwood for an average of 48.53 minutes, playing 3,882 of his team's 3,890 minutes. Because <mask> played in overtime games, he averaged more minutes per game than the regulation 48; in fact, <mask> would have reached the 3,890-minute mark if he had not been ejected in one game after picking up a second technical foul with eight minutes left to play.His extraordinary feats in the 1962 season were later subject of the 2005 book Wilt, 1962 by Gary M. Pomerantz, who used <mask> as a metaphor for the uprising of Black America. In addition to <mask>'s regular-season accomplishments, he scored 42 points in the 1962 NBA All-Star Game, a record that stood until broken by Anthony Davis in 2017. In the 1962 NBA playoffs, the Warriors met the Boston Celtics again in the Eastern Division Finals, a team which Bob Cousy and Bill Russell called the greatest Celtics team of all time. Each team won their home games, so the series was split at three after six games. In a closely contested Game 7, <mask> tied the game at 107 with 16 seconds to go, but Celtics shooting guard Sam Jones hit a clutch shot with two seconds left to win the series for Boston. In later years, <mask> was criticized for averaging 50 points but not winning a title. In his defense, Warriors coach Frank McGuire said that "Wilt has been simply super-human", and pointed out the Warriors lacked a consistent second scorer, a playmaker, and a second big man to take pressure off <mask>.1962–63 NBA season

In the 1962–63 NBA season, Gottlieb sold the Warriors franchise for $850,000 (equal to about $ today) to a group of businessmen led by Marty Simmons from San Francisco, and the team relocated to become the San Francisco Warriors under a new coach, Bob Feerick. This also meant that the team broke apart, as Paul Arizin chose to retire rather than move away from his family and his job at IBM in Philadelphia, and Tom Gola was homesick, requesting a trade to the lowly New York Knicks halfway through the season. With both secondary scorers gone, <mask> continued his array of statistical feats, averaging 44.8 points and 24.3 rebounds per game that year. Despite his individual success, the Warriors lost 49 of their 80 games and missed the playoffs. 1963–64 NBA season
In the 1963–64 NBA season, <mask> got yet another new coach, Alex Hannum, and was joined by a promising rookie center, Nate Thurmond, who eventually entered the Hall of Fame. Ex-soldier Hannum, who later entered the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach, was a crafty psychologist who emphasized defense and passing. Most importantly, he was not afraid to stand up to the dominant <mask>, who was known to not communicate with coaches he did not like.Backed up by valuable rookie Thurmond, <mask> had another good season with 36.9 points per game and 22.3 rebounds per game, and the Warriors went all the way to the 1964 NBA Finals. In that series, they succumbed to Russell's Boston Celtics yet again, this time losing 4–1. As Cherry remarked, not only <mask> but Hannum in particular deserved much credit because he had basically had taken the bad 31–49 squad of last year, plus Thurmond, and made it into an NBA Finalist. 1964–65 NBA season
In the summer of 1964, <mask>, one of the prominent participants at the famed Rucker Park basketball court in New York City, made the acquaintance of a tall, talented 17-year-old who played there. Soon, the young Lew Alcindor was allowed into his inner circle, and quickly idolized the ten-year older NBA player. <mask> and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as Alcindor would name himself later, would develop an intensely personal antipathy. In the following 1964–65 NBA season, the Warriors got off to a terrible start and ran into financial trouble.At the 1965 NBA All-Star Weekend, <mask> was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, the new name of the relocated Syracuse Nationals. In return, the Warriors received Paul Neumann, Connie Dierking, Lee Shaffer (who opted to retire rather than report to the Warriors), and $150,000 (equal to about $ today). When <mask> left the Warriors, owner Franklin Mieuli said: "<mask> is not an easy man to love ... the fans in San Francisco never learned to love him. Wilt is easy to hate ... people came to see him lose." Philadelphia 76ers (1965–1968)

1964–65 NBA season with the 76ers
After the trade, <mask> found himself on a promising Sixers team that included guards Hal Greer, a future Hall-of-Famer, and talented role players Larry Costello, Chet Walker, and Lucious Jackson. Cherry remarks that there was a certain tension within the team, as Greer was the formerly undisputed leader and was not willing to give up his authority, and Jackson, a talented center, was now forced to play power forward because <mask> blocked the center spot; however, as the season progressed, the three began to mesh better. He did not care for the Sixers' coach Dolph Schayes because in his view Schayes had made several disrespectful remarks when they were rival players in the NBA.Statistically, <mask> was again outstanding, posting 34.7 points per game and 22.9 rebounds per game overall for the season. After defeating the Cincinnati Royals led by Oscar Robertson in the 1965 NBA playoffs, the Sixers met <mask>'s familiar rival, the Boston Celtics. The press called it an even matchup in all positions, even at center, where Bill Russell was expected to give <mask> a tough battle. The two teams split the first six games, and because of the better season record, the last game was held in the Celtics' Boston Garden. In that Game 7, both centers were marvelous, as <mask> scored 30 points and 32 rebounds, and Russell logged 16 points, 27 rebounds and eight assists. In the final minute, <mask> hit two clutch free throws and slam dunked on Russell, bringing Boston's lead down to 110–109 with five seconds left. Russell botched the inbounds pass, hitting a guy-wire over the backboard, and giving the ball back to the Sixers.Coach Schayes called timeout, and decided to run the last play over Hal Greer rather than <mask> because he feared the Celtics would intentionally foul him as he was a poor foul shooter. When Greer attempted to inbound the ball, John Havlicek stole it to preserve the Celtics' lead. For the fifth time in seven years, Russell's team deprived <mask> of the title. According to <mask>, that was the time that people started calling him a loser. In an April 1965 issue of Sports Illustrated, <mask> conducted an interview titled "My Life in a Bush League" where he criticized his fellow players, coaches, and NBA administrators. <mask> later commented that he could see in hindsight how the interview was instrumental in damaging his public image. 1965–66 NBA season
In the 1965–66 NBA season, the Sixers experienced tragedy when Ike Richman, the Sixers' co-owner as well as <mask>'s confidant and lawyer, died of a coronary.The Sixers would post a 55–25 regular-season record, and for his strong play, <mask> won his second MVP award. In that season, <mask> again dominated his opposition by recording 33.5 points and 24.6 rebounds a game, leading the league in both categories. In one particular game, <mask> blocked a dunk attempt by Gus Johnson so hard that he dislocated Johnson's shoulder. Off the court, <mask>'s commitment to the cause was doubted, as <mask> was a late sleeper, lived in New York, preferring to commute to Philadelphia rather than live there, and was only available during the afternoon for training. Because Schayes did not want to risk angering his best player, he scheduled the daily workout at 4 P.M. This angered the team, who preferred an early schedule to have the afternoon off, but Schayes just said: "There is no other way." Irv Kosloff, who now owned the Sixers alone after Richman's death, pleaded with <mask> to move to Philadelphia during the season, but was turned down.In the 1966 NBA playoffs, the Sixers again met the Celtics, and for the first time had home-court advantage. Despite this, Boston easily won the first two games on the road, winning 115–96 and 114–93; while <mask> played within his usual range, his supporting cast shot under 40%. This caused sports journalist Joe McGinnis to comment: "The Celtics played like champions and the Sixers just played." In Game 3, <mask> scored 31 points and 27 rebounds for an important road win, and the next day, coach Schayes planned to hold a joint team practice. <mask> said he was too tired to attend, and even refused Schayes' plea to at least show up and shoot a few foul shots with the team. In Game 4, Boston won 114–108. Prior to Game 5, <mask> was nowhere to be found, skipping practice and being non-accessible.Outwardly, Schayes defended his star center as "excused from practice", but his teammates knew the truth and were much less forgiving. In Game 5 itself, <mask> was superb, scoring 46 points and grabbing 34 rebounds, but the Celtics won the game 120–112 and the series. Cherry is highly critical of <mask> because, while conceding he was the only Sixers player who performed in the series, he pointed out his unprofessional, egotistical behavior as being a bad example for his teammates. 1966–67 NBA season: first championship season
Prior to the 1966–67 NBA season, the friendly yet unassertive Schayes was replaced by a familiar face, the crafty but firm Alex Hannum. In what Cherry calls a tumultuous locker room meeting, Hannum addressed several key issues he observed during the last season, several of them putting <mask> in an unfavorable light. Sixers forward Chet Walker testified that on several occasions, players had to pull <mask> and Hannum apart to prevent a fistfight. Fellow forward Billy Cunningham observed that Hannum "never backed down" and "showed who was the boss."By doing this, he won <mask>'s respect. When emotions cooled off, Hannum pointed out to <mask> that he was on the same page in trying to win a title; but to pull this off, like his teammates, he had to "act like a man" both on and off the court. Concerning basketball, he persuaded him to change his style of play. Loaded with several other players who could score, such as future Hall-of-Famers Hal Greer and newcomer Billy Cunningham, Hannum wanted <mask> to concentrate more on defense. As a result of his style of play change, <mask> was less dominant, taking only 14% of the team's shots (in his 50.4 points per game season, it was 35.3%) but extremely efficient, as he averaged a career-low 24.1 points. Nevertheless, he led the league in rebounds (24.2), ended third in assists (7.8), had a record-breaking .683 field goal accuracy, and played strong defense. His efficiency that season was reflected by a streak of 35 consecutive made field

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 goals over the course of four games in February.For these feats, <mask> earned his third MVP award. The Sixers charged their way to a then-record 68–13 season, including a record 46–4 start. In addition, the formerly egotistical <mask> began to praise his teammates, lauding hardworking Luke Jackson as the "ultimate power forward", calling Hal Greer a deadly jumpshooter, and point guard Wali Jones an excellent defender and outsider scorer. Off the court, <mask> invited the team to restaurants and paid the entire bill, knowing he earned 10 times more than all the others. Greer, who was considered a consummate professional and often clashed with him because of his attitude, spoke positively of the new <mask>: "You knew in a minute the Big Fella [<mask>] was ready to go ... and everybody would follow." The Sixers' 1966–67 NBA season was a remarkable season, as recounted by writer Wayne Lynch in Season of the 76ers, his 2002 book centered on <mask>. The Sixers got the best regular-season record and <mask> won his first NBA championship, with <mask> himself describing the team as the best in NBA history.In the 1967 NBA playoffs, the Sixers yet again battled the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Division Finals, and again held home-court advantage. In Game 1, the Sixers beat Boston 127–112, powered by Hal Greer's 39 points and <mask>'s unofficial quadruple double, with 24 points, 32 rebounds, 13 assists, and 12 unofficially counted blocks. In Game 2, the Sixers won 107–102 in overtime, and player-coach Russell grudgingly praised <mask> for intimidating the Celtics into taking low percentage shots from further outside. In Game 3, <mask> grabbed 41 rebounds and helped the Sixers win 115–104. The Celtics prevented a sweep by winning Game 4 with a 121–117 victory. In Game 5, the Sixers simply overpowered the Celtics 140–116, ending Boston's historic run of eight consecutive NBA titles. <mask> scored 29 points, 36 rebounds, and 13 assists, and was highly praised by Celtics Russell and K. C. Jones.In the 1967 NBA Finals, the Sixers were pitted against <mask>'s old team, the San Francisco Warriors of his one-time backup Nate Thurmond and star forward Rick Barry. The Sixers won the first two games, with <mask> and Greer taking credit for defensive dominance and clutch shooting, respectively, but San Francisco won two of the next three games, so Philadelphia was up 3–2 prior to Game 6. In Game 6, the Warriors were trailing 123–122 with 15 seconds left. For the last play, Thurmond and Barry were assigned to do a pick and roll against <mask> and whoever would guard Barry; however, the Sixers foiled it because when Barry ran past Thurmond's pick and drove to the basket, he was picked up by Chet Walker, making it impossible to shoot. Meanwhile Thurmond was covered by <mask>, which made it impossible to pass. Barry botched his shot attempt, and the Sixers won the championship. <mask>, who contributed with 17.7 points per game and 28.7 rebounds per game against fellow future Hall-of-Fame pivot Nate Thurmond, never failing to snare at least 23 rebounds in the six games, said: "It is wonderful to be a part of the greatest team in basketball ... being a champion is like having a big round glow inside of you."1967–68 NBA season
In the 1967–68 NBA season, matters continued to turn sour between <mask> and the Sixers' sole surviving owner, Irv Kosloff. This conflict had been going along for a while. In 1965, <mask> asserted that he and the late Richman had worked out a deal which would give him 25% of the franchise once he ended his career. Although there is no written proof for or against, ex-Sixers coach Dolph Schayes and Sixers lawyer Alan Levitt assumed <mask> was correct. In any case, Kosloff declined the request, leaving <mask> livid and willing to jump to the rival ABA once his contract ended in 1967. Kosloff and <mask> worked out a truce, and later signed a one-year, $250,000 contract. On the hardwood, <mask> continued his focus on team play and registered 24.3 points and 23.8 rebounds a game for the season.On March 18, 1968, <mask> reportedly had a quintuple-double with 53 points, 32 rebounds, 14 assists, 24 blocks, and 11 steals in a 158–128 victory against the Lakers. <mask> also recorded the most points in a triple double, an NBA record broken by Russell Westbrook in 2017 and improved by James Harden in 2018. The 76ers had the best record in the league for the third straight season. <mask> also made history by becoming the only center in NBA history to finish the season as the leader in assists, his 702 beating runner-up, Hall-of-Fame point guard Lenny Wilkens' total by 23. <mask> likened his assist title to legendary home-run hitter Babe Ruth leading the league in sacrifice bunts, and he dispelled the myth that he could not and would not pass the ball. For these feats, <mask> won his fourth and final MVP title. Another landmark was his 25,000th point, making him the first-ever player to score that many points; he gave the ball to his team physician Stan Lorber.Winning 62 games, the Sixers easily took the first playoff berth of the 1968 NBA playoffs. In the 1968 Eastern Division Semifinals, they were pitted against the New York Knicks. In a physically tough matchup, the Sixers lost sixth man Billy Cunningham with a broken hand, and <mask>, Greer and Jackson were struggling with inflamed feet, bad knees, and pulled hamstrings, respectively. Going ahead 3–2, the Sixers defeated the Knicks 115–97 in Game 6 after <mask> scored 25 points and 27 rebounds; he had a successful series in which he led both teams in points (153), rebounds (145), and assists (38). In the 1968 Eastern Division Finals, the Sixers yet again met the Boston Celtics, again with home-court advantage, and this time as reigning champions. Despite the Sixers' injury woes, coach Hannum was confident to "take the Celtics in less than seven games", and he pointed out the age of the Celtics, who were built around Bill Russell and guard Sam Jones, both 34. On April 4, national tragedy struck with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. With eight of the ten starting players on the Sixers and Celtics being African-American, both teams were in deep shock, and there were calls to cancel the series.In a game called "unreal" and "devoid of emotion", the Sixers lost 127–118 on April 5. After attending the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., <mask> called out to the angry rioters who were setting fires all over the country, stating King would not have approved. In Game 2, Philadelphia evened the series with a 115–106 victory, and won Games 3 and 4, with <mask> suspiciously often played by Celtics backup center Wayne Embry, causing the press to speculate Russell was worn down. Prior to Game 5, the Celtics seemed done, as no NBA team had overcome a 3–1 series deficit before, yet the Celtics rallied back, winning Games 5 and 6 122–104 and 114–106, respectively, powered by a spirited John Havlicek and helped by the Sixers' terrible shooting. What followed was the first of three consecutive controversial and painful Game 7s in which <mask> played. In that Game 7, the Sixers could not get their act together and 15,202 stunned Philadelphia fans witnessed a historic 100–96 defeat, making it the first time in NBA history a team lost a series after leading three games to one. Although Cherry points out that the Sixers shot badly (Hal Greer, Wali Jones, Chet Walker, Luke Jackson, and Matt Guokas hit a combined 25 of 74 shots), and <mask> grabbed 34 rebounds and shot 4-of-9, <mask> himself scored only 14 points.In the second half of Game 7, <mask> did not attempt a single shot from the field. Cherry observes a strange pattern in that game, as in a typical Sixers game, <mask> got the ball 60 times in the low post but only 23 times in Game 7, and only seven times in the third and only twice in the fourth quarter. <mask> later blamed coach Hannum for the lack of touches, a point which the coach conceded himself, but Cherry points out that <mask>, who always thought of himself as the best player of all time, should have been outspoken enough to demand the ball himself. The loss meant that <mask> was now 1–6 in playoff series against the Celtics. After that season, coach Alex Hannum wanted to be closer to his family on the West Coast; he left the Sixers to coach the Oakland Oaks in the newly founded American Basketball Association (ABA). <mask> then asked for a trade, and Sixers general manager Jack Ramsay traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers for Darrall Imhoff, Archie Clark, and Jerry Chambers. The motivation for this move remains in dispute.According to sportswriter Roland Lazenby, a journalist close to the Lakers, <mask> was angry at Kosloff for breaking the alleged Richman–<mask> deal. According to Ramsay, <mask> threatened to jump to the ABA after Hannum left, and forced the trade himself. Cherry finally adds several personal reasons, among them <mask> felt he had grown too big for Philadelphia, sought the presence of fellow celebrities, which were plenty in Los Angeles, and finally also desired the opportunity to date white women, which was possible for a black man in Los Angeles but hard to imagine elsewhere back then. Los Angeles Lakers (1968–1973)

1968–69 NBA season
On July 9, 1968, the trade between the Lakers and Sixers was completed, making it the first time a reigning NBA MVP was traded the next season. Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke gave <mask> an unprecedented contract, paying him $250,000 after taxes (about $ million in real value); in comparison, previous Lakers top earner Jerry West was paid $100,000 before taxes (about $,000 in real value). <mask> joined a squad which featured Hall-of-Fame forward Elgin Baylor and Hall-of-Fame guard Jerry West, along with backup center Mel Counts, forwards Keith Erickson and Tom Hawkins, and talented 5'11" guard Johnny Egan. The lack of a second guard next to West, and the lack of speed and quickness concerned, coach Butch Van Breda Kolff.After losing Clark and Gail Goodrich, who joined the Phoenix Suns after the 1968 expansion draft, he said: "Egan gets murdered on defense because of his [lack of] size ... but if I don't play him, we look like a bunch of trucks." In addition, Cherry observed that <mask> was neither a natural leader nor a loyal follower, which made him difficult to fit in. While he was on cordial terms with Jerry West, he often argued with team captain Elgin Baylor, later explaining in regard to Baylor: "We were good friends, but ... [in] black culture ... you never let the other guy one-up you." The greatest problem was his tense relationship with Lakers coach Bill Van Breda Kolff. Pejoratively calling the new recruit "The Load", he later complained that <mask> was egotistical, never respected him, too often slacked off in practice and focused too much on his own statistics. In return, <mask> blasted Van Breda Kolff as "the dumbest and worst coach ever." Laker Keith Erickson observed that "Butch catered to Elgin and Jerry ... and that is not a good way to get on <mask>'s side ... that relationship was doomed from the start."<mask> experienced a problematic and often frustrating season. Van Breda Kolff benched him several times, which never happened in his career before; in mid-season, <mask>, a perennial scoring champion, had two games in which he scored only six and then only two points. Playing through his problems, <mask> averaged 20.5 points and 21.1 rebounds a game that season. Jack Kent Cooke was pleased because ticket sales went up by 11% since acquiring <mask>. In the 1969 NBA playoffs, the Lakers dispatched 4–2 <mask>'s old club, the San Francisco Warriors, after losing the first two games, and then defeated the Atlanta Hawks, and met <mask>'s familiar rivals, Bill Russell's Boston Celtics. Going into the series as 3-to-1 favorites, the Lakers won the first two games but dropped the next two. <mask> was criticized as a non-factor in the series, getting neutralized by Russell with little effort.In Game 5, <mask> scored 13 points and grabbed 31 rebounds, leading Los Angeles to a 117–104 win. In Game 6, the Celtics won 99–90, and <mask> only scored 8 points. Cherry accuses him of choking because if "<mask> had come up big and put up a normal 30 point scoring night", the Lakers would have probably won their first championship at Los Angeles. Game 7 featured a surreal scene because Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke put up thousands of balloons in the rafters of the Forum in Los Angeles in anticipation of a Lakers win. This display of arrogance motivated the Celtics. In Game 7, the Lakers trailed 91–76 after three quarters. The Lakers mounted a comeback, but then <mask> twisted his knee after a rebound and had to be replaced by Mel Counts.With three minutes to go, the Lakers trailed 103–102, but they committed costly turnovers and lost the game 108–106, despite a triple-double from West, who had 42 points, 13 rebounds, and 12 assists, and became the only player in NBA history to be named Finals MVP despite being on the losing team. After the game, many wondered why <mask> sat out the final six minutes. At the time of his final substitution, he had scored 18 points (hitting seven of his eight shots) and grabbed 27 rebounds, significantly better than the 10 points of Mel Counts on 4-of-13 shooting. Among others, Russell did not believe <mask>'s injury was grave, and openly accused him of being a malingerer, stating: "Any injury short of a broken leg or a broken back is not enough." In spite of their earlier quarrels, Van Breda Kolff came to his defense, insisting the often-maligned <mask> hardly was able to move in the end. Van Breda Kolff himself was perceived as "pig-headed" for benching <mask>, and soon resigned as Lakers coach. Cherry comments that some journalists reported how Game 7 destroyed two careers: "<mask>'s because he wouldn't take over and Van Breda Kolff because he wouldn't give in."1969–70 NBA season
In the 1969–70 NBA season under new coach Joe Mullaney, <mask> began the season strongly, averaging 32.2 points per game and 20.6 rebounds per game over the first nine games of the season. During the ninth game, he had a serious knee injury, suffering a total rupture of the patellar tendon at the base of his right kneecap, and missed the next several months before appearing in the final three games of the 82-game regular season, the first season in which he failed to reach 20 rebounds per game. Owing to his strong start, he still managed to put up a season-average 27.3 points, 18.4 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game. The Lakers again charged through the 1970 NBA Playoffs, and in the 1970 NBA Finals were pitted against the New York Knicks, loaded with future Hall-of-Famers Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, and Walt Frazier. Cherry observed that Reed, a prolific midrange shooter, was a bad matchup for <mask>. Having lost lateral quickness due to his injury, <mask> was often too slow to block Reed's preferred high post jump shots. In Game 1, the Knicks masterminded a 124–112 win in which Reed scored 37 points.In Game 2, <mask> scored 19 points, grabbed 24 rebounds, and blocked Reed's shot in the final seconds, leading the Lakers to a 105–103 win. Game 3 saw Jerry West famously hit a 60-foot shot at the buzzer to tie the game at 102; however, the Knicks took the game 111–108. In Game 4, <mask> scored 18 points and grabbed 25 rebounds and helped tie the series at 2. In Game 5, with the Knicks trailing by double digits, Reed pulled his thigh muscle and seemed to be done for the series. By conventional wisdom, <mask> now should have dominated against little-used Knicks backup centers Nate Bowman and Bill Hosket or forwards Bradley and DeBusschere, who gave up more than half a foot against him. Instead, the Lakers gave away their 13-point halftime lead and succumbed to the aggressive Knicks defense, as they committed 19 second-half turnovers, and the two main scorers (<mask> and West) shot the ball in the entire second half only three and two times, respectively. The Lakers lost 107–100 in what was called one of the greatest comebacks in NBA Finals history.In Game 6, <mask> scored 45 points, grabbed 27 rebounds, and almost single-handedly equalized the series in a 135–113 Lakers win, and with Reed out, the Knicks seemed doomed prior to Game 7 in New York; however, the hero of that Game 7 was Willis Reed, who famously hobbled up court, scored the first four points, and inspired his team to one of the most famous playoff upsets of all time. The Knicks led by 27 at halftime, and despite scoring 21 points, <mask> could not prevent a third consecutive loss in Game 7. <mask> was criticized for his inability to dominate his injured counterpart but Cherry pointed out that his feat, coming back from a career-threatening injury himself, was too quickly forgotten. 1970–71 NBA season

In the 1970–71 NBA season, the Lakers made a notable move by signing future Hall-of-Fame

masks: Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Wilt Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Wilt Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain Chamberlain


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 guard Gail Goodrich, who came back from the Phoenix Suns after playing for the Lakers until 1968. <mask> averaged 20.7 points, 18.2 rebounds, and 4.3 assists, once again led the NBA in rebounding, and the Lakers won the Pacific Division title. After losing Elgin Baylor to an Achilles tendon rupture that effectively ended his career, and especially after losing Jerry West after a knee injury, the handicapped Lakers were seen as underdogs against the Milwaukee Bucks of freshly crowned MVP Lew Alcindor, and veteran Hall-of-Fame guard Oscar Robertson in the Western Conference Finals. Winning the regular season with 66 wins, the Bucks were seen as favourites against the depleted Lakers; still, many pundits were looking forward to the matchup between the 34-year-old <mask> and the 24-year-old Alcindor.In Game 1, Alcindor outscored <mask> 32–22, and the Bucks won 106–85. In Game 2, the Bucks won again despite <mask> scoring 26 points, four more than his Milwaukee counterpart. Prior to Game 3, things became even worse for the Lakers when Keith Erickson, West's stand-in, had an appendectomy and was out for the season; with rookie Jim McMillian easing the scoring pressure, <mask> scored 24 points and grabbed 24 rebounds in a 118–107 victory, but the Bucks defeated the Lakers 117–94 in Game 4 to take a 3–1 series lead. Milwaukee closed out the series at home with a 116–98 victory in Game 5. Although <mask> lost, he was lauded for holding his own against MVP Alcindor, who was not only 10 years younger but healthy. After the 1971 NBA Playoffs, <mask> challenged heavyweight boxing legend Muhammad Ali to a fight. The 15-round bout would have taken place on July 26, 1971, in the Houston Astrodome.<mask> trained with Cus d'Amato but later backed out, withdrawing the much-publicized challenge, by way of a contractual escape clause which predicated the <mask> match on Ali beating Joe Frazier in a fight scheduled for early 1971, which became  Ali's first professional loss, enabling <mask> to legally withdraw from the bout. In a 1999 interview, <mask> stated that boxing trainer Cus D'Amato had twice before, in 1965 and 1967, approached the basketball star with the idea, and that he and Ali had each been offered $5 million for the bout. In 1965, <mask> had consulted his father, who had seen Ali fight, and finally said no. Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke had also offered <mask> a record-setting contract on the condition that <mask> agree to give up what Cooke termed "this boxing foolishness." In 1967, recently retired NFL star Jim Brown acted as <mask>'s manager, but Ali's manager Jabir Herbert Muhammad backed out of the <mask> match which was slated to take place at Madison Square Garden. 1971–72 NBA season: second championship season
In the 1971–72 NBA season, the Lakers hired former Celtics star guard Bill Sharman as head coach. Sharman introduced morning shoot-arounds, in which the perennial latecomer <mask> regularly participated (in contrast to earlier years with Dolph Schayes) and transformed him into a defensive-minded, low-scoring post defender in the mold of his old rival Bill Russell.Furthermore, he told <mask> to use his rebounding and passing skills to quickly initiate fastbreaks to his teammates. While no longer being the main scorer, <mask> was named the new captain of the Lakers. After rupturing his Achilles tendon, perennial captain Elgin Baylor retired, leaving a void <mask> now filled. Initially, Sharman wanted <mask> and West to share this duty, but West declined, stating he was injury-prone and wanted to solely concentrate on the game. <mask> accepted his new roles and posted an all-time low 14.8 points per game but also won the rebound crown with 19.2 rebounds per game and led the league with a .649 field goal percentage. Powered by his defensive presence, the Lakers embarked on an unprecedented 33-game win streak en route to a then-record 69 wins in the regular season, yet the streak led to one strangely dissonant event. According to Flynn Robinson, after the record-setting streak, Lakers owner Cooke sought to reward each of his players, who were expecting perhaps a trip to Hawaii, with a $5 pen set.In response, <mask> had everybody put all the pens in the middle of the floor and stepped on them. In the post-season, the Lakers swept the Chicago Bulls, then went on to face the Milwaukee Bucks of young superstar center and regular-season MVP Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (formerly Lew Alcindor). The matchup between <mask> and Abdul-Jabbar was hailed by Life magazine as the greatest matchup in all of sports. <mask> would help lead the Lakers past Abdul-Jabbar and the Bucks in six games. Particularly, <mask> was lauded for his performance in Game 6, which the Lakers won 104–100 after trailing by 10 points in the fourth quarter; <mask> scored 24 points and 22 rebounds, played all 48 minutes, and outsprinted the younger Bucks center on several late Lakers fast breaks. Jerry West called it "the greatest ball-busting performance I have ever seen." <mask> performed so well in the series that Time magazine stated: "In the N.B.A.'s western division title series with Milwaukee, he (<mask>) decisively outplayed basketball's newest giant superstar, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, eleven years his junior." In the 1972 NBA Finals, the Lakers again met the New York Knicks, which were shorthanded after losing 6'9" Willis Reed to injury, and so undersized 6'8" Jerry Lucas had the task to defend against the 7'1" <mask>. Prolific outside shooter Lucas helped New York to win Game 1, hitting nine of his 11 shots in the first half alone. In Game 2, which the Lakers won 106–92, <mask> put Lucas into foul trouble, and the Knicks lost defensive power forward Dave DeBusschere to injury. In Game 3, <mask> scored 26 points and grabbed 20 rebounds for another Lakers win. In a fiercely battled Game 4, <mask> was playing with five fouls late in the game. Having never fouled out in his career, a feat that he was very proud of, <mask> played aggressive defense despite the risk of fouling out, and blocked two of Lucas' shots in overtime, proving those wrong who said he only played for his own stats; he ended scoring a game-high 27 points.In that game, he fell on his right hand, and was said to have sprained it but it was actually broken. For Game 5, <mask>'s hands were packed into thick pads normally destined for defensive linesmen in American football; he was offered a painkilling shot but refused because he feared he would lose his shooting touch if his hands became numb. In Game 5, <mask> recorded 24 points, 29 rebounds, 8 assists, and 8 blocked shots. While blocked shots were not an official NBA statistic at that time, announcer Keith Jackson counted the blocks during the broadcast. <mask>'s outstanding all-around performance helped the Lakers win their first championship in Los Angeles with a decisive 114–100 win. <mask> was named Finals MVP, and was admired for dominating the Knicks in Game 5 while playing injured. 1972–73 NBA season
The 1972–73 NBA season was to be <mask>'s last, although he did not know this at the time.In his last season, the Lakers lost substance, as Happy Hairston was injured, Flynn Robinson and LeRoy Ellis had left, and veteran Jerry West struggled with injury. <mask> averaged 13.2 points and 18.6 rebounds, still enough to win the rebounding crown for the 11th time in his career. In addition, he shot an NBA record 0.727 for the season, bettering his own mark of 0.683 from the 1966–67 season. It was the ninth time <mask> would lead the league in field goal percentage. The Lakers won 60 games in the regular season and reached the 1973 NBA Finals against the New York Knicks. This time, the tables were turned, as the Knicks now featured a healthy team with a rejuvenated Willis Reed, and the Lakers were now handicapped by several injuries. In that series, the Lakers won Game 1 115–112, but the Knicks won Games 2 and 3; things worsened when Jerry West injured his hamstring yet again.In Game 4, the shorthanded Lakers were no match for New York. In Game 5, the valiant but injured West and Hairston had miserable games, and despite <mask> scoring 23 points and grabbing 21 rebounds, the Lakers lost 102–93 and the series. After the Knicks finished off the close fifth game with a late flourish led by Earl Monroe and Phil Jackson, <mask> made a dunk with one second left, which turned out to be the last play of his NBA career. Coaching career

San Diego Conquistadors (1973–1974)
In 1973, the San Diego Conquistadors of the NBA rival league ABA signed <mask> as a player-coach for a $600,000 salary. The Lakers sued their former star and successfully prevented him from actually playing because he still owed them the option year of his contract. Barred from playing, <mask> mostly left the coaching duties to his assistant Stan Albeck, who recalled: "<mask> ... has a great feel for pro basketball ... the day-to-day things that are an important part of basketball ... just bored him. He did not have the patience."The players were split on <mask>, who was seen as competent but often indifferent and more occupied with promotion of his autobiography Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door than with coaching. He once skipped a game to sign autographs for the book. In his single season as a coach, the Conquistadors went a mediocre 37–47 in the regular season and lost against the Utah Stars in the Division Semifinals. After the season, <mask> retired from professional basketball; in addition, he was displeased by the meager attendance, as crowds averaged 1,843, just over half of the team's small San Diego 3,200-seat sports arena. NBA career statistics

Regular season

Playoffs

Post-NBA career
After his stint with the Conquistadors, <mask> successfully went into business and entertainment, made money in stocks and real estate, bought a popular Harlem nightclub, which he renamed Big Wilt's Smalls Paradise, and invested in broodmares. <mask> also sponsored his personal professional volleyball and track and field teams, and also provided high-level teams for girls and women in basketball, track, volleyball and softball, and made money by appearing in ads for TWA, American Express, Volkswagen, Drexel Burnham, Le Tigre Clothing, and Foot Locker. After his basketball career, volleyball became <mask>'s new passion.Being a talented hobby volleyballer during his Lakers days, he became a board member of the newly founded International Volleyball Association in 1974, and then its president one year later. As a testament to his importance, the IVA All-Star game was televised only because <mask> also played in it; he rose to the challenge and was named the game's MVP. He played occasional matches for the IVA Seattle Smashers before the league folded in 1979. <mask> promoted the sport so effectively that he was named to the Volleyball Hall of Fame, and he became one of the few athletes who were enshrined in different sports. In 1976, <mask> turned to his interest in movies, forming a film production and distribution company to make his first film, entitled Go For It. Starting in the 1970s, he formed Wilt's Athletic Club, a track and field club in southern California, coached by then UCLA assistant coach Bob Kersee in the early days of his career. Among the members of the team were Florence Griffith, before she set the current world records in the 100 meters and 200 meters; three-time world champion Greg Foster; and future Olympic Gold medalists Andre Phillips, Alice Brown, and Jeanette Bolden.In all, he claimed 60 athletes with aspirations of expanding to 100. While actively promoting the sport in 1982, <mask> claimed he was considering a return to athletic competition but not in basketball; rather, in Masters athletics. At the time, he claimed he had only been beaten in the high jump once, by Olympic champion Charles Dumas, and that he had never been beaten in the shot put, including beating Olympic legend Al Oerter. <mask> played a villainous warrior and counterpart of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film Conan the Destroyer (1984). In November 1998, he signed with Ian Ng Cheng Hin, CEO of Northern Cinema House Entertainment (NCH Entertainment), to do his own bio-pic, wanting to tell his life story his way. He had been working on the screenplay notes for over a year at the time of his death. Sy Goldberg, <mask>'s longtime attorney, said: "He was more inquisitive than anybody I ever knew.He was writing a screenplay about his life. He was interested in world affairs, sometimes he'd call me up late at night and discuss philosophy. I think he'll be remembered as a great man. He happened to make a living playing basketball but he was more than that. He could talk on any subject. He was a Goliath." When million-dollar contracts became common in the NBA, <mask> increasingly felt he had been underpaid during his career.A result of this resentment was the 1997 book Who's Running the Asylum? Inside the Insane World of Sports Today (1997), in which he harshly criticized the NBA of the 1990s for being too disrespectful of players of the past. Even far beyond his playing days, <mask> was a very fit person. In his mid-forties, he was able to humble rookie Magic Johnson in practice, and he flirted with making a comeback in the NBA even in the 1980s. In the 1980–81 NBA season, coach Larry Brown recalled that the 45-year-old <mask> had received an offer from the Cleveland Cavaliers. When <mask> was 50, the New Jersey Nets had the same idea but were declined. He would continue to epitomize physical fitness for years to come, including participating in several marathons.Death
<mask> had a history of heart trouble. In 1992, he was briefly hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat. According to those close to him, he eventually began taking medication for his heart troubles. In 1999, his condition deteriorated rapidly. During this time, he lost 50 pounds. After undergoing dental surgery in the week before his death, he was in great pain and seemed unable to recover from the stress. On October 12, 1999, <mask> died in Bel-Air, California, at the age of 63.His agent Sy Goldberg stated <mask> died of congestive heart failure. NBA players and officials were saddened at the loss of a player they universally remembered as a symbol of the sport. His lifelong on-court rival and personal friend Bill Russell stated "the fierceness of our competition bonded us together for eternity", and Celtics coach Red Auerbach praised <mask> as vital for the success of the entire NBA. Ex-Lakers teammate Jerry West remembered him as an utterly dominant yet friendly and humorous player, and fellow Hall-of-Famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Johnny Kerr, Phil Jackson, and Wes Unseld called <mask> one of the greatest players in the history of the sport. Legacy

Awards and honors

 NBA
 2× NBA champion (, )
 NBA Finals MVP (1972)
 4× NBA Most Valuable Player (, –)
 13× NBA All-Star (–, –)
 NBA All-Star Game MVP (1960)
 7× All-NBA First Team (1960–, , 1966–1968)
 3× All-NBA Second Team (, , )
 2× NBA All-Defensive First Team (1972, )
 NBA Rookie of the Year (1960)

 Leading titles
 7× NBA scoring champion (1960–1966)
 11× NBA rebounding champion (1960–1963, 1966–, –1973)
 9× NBA minutes leader (1960–1964, 1966–)
 9x NBA field goal percentage leader (1962, 1963, 1965–1969, 1972–1973)
 NBA assist leader (1968)

 Post-career
 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (1978)
 NBA 35th Anniversary Team (1980)
 NBA 50th Anniversary Team (1996)
 Ranked No. 13 in ESPN list of top athletes of the 20th century (1999)
 Ranked No. 2 in ESPN list of best centers ever (2007)
 Ranked No.2 in Slams "Top 50 NBA Players of All Time in NBA History" (2009)
 Ranked No. 6 in ESPN list of top 74 NBA players of all time (2020)
 NBA 75th Anniversary Team (2021)

 Retired numbers
 No. 13 jersey retired by the Kansas Jayhawks
 No. 13 retired by the Harlem Globetrotters
 No. 13 retired by the Golden State Warriors
 No. 13 retired by the Philadelphia 76ers
 No. 13 retired by the Los Angeles Lakers

 High school and college
 Mr. Basketball USA (1955)
 NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player (1957)
 2× Consensus first-team All-American (1957, 1958)

Individual achievements and recognition

<mask> is regarded as one of the most extraordinary and dominant basketball players in the history of the NBA.The 1972 NBA Finals MVP is holder of numerous official NBA all-time records, establishing himself as a scoring champion, all-time top rebounder and accurate field goal shooter. He led the NBA in scoring seven times, field goal percentage nine times, minutes played eight times, rebounding eleven times, and assists once. He was also responsible for several rule changes, including widening the lane from 12 to 16 feet, as well as changes to rules regarding inbounding the ball, and shooting free throws. <mask> is most remembered for his 100-point game, which is widely considered one of basketball's

masks:
Chamberlain
Chamberlain
Chamberlain
Chamberlain
Chamberlain
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