No Sixer has scored 30 points in a game all season. But 50 years ago Friday, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors.
Since then, no one has come close to the 100-point mark. Kobe Bryant put 81 on the Raptors in 2006, David Robinson scored 71 in 1994 and Michael Jordan’s career-high was 69 in 1990. But 100?
“It’s ridiculous,” said Thaddeus Young. “I scored 68 in a high school game once. It was just that I was better than everyone else on the court.”
During the 1961-62 season, Chamberlain must have felt the same way. The Overbrook High product averaged 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds for the season. And on that now-famous night, the 7-foot-1 center got 63 shots up as the Warriors beat the Knicks, 169-147. The career 51.1 percent free-throw shooter made 28-of-32 from the charity stripe.
Sixers shooting guard Jodie Meeks remembers the 2009 night he scored 54 points for Kentucky.
“It seemed like everything I threw up was going in. It was back in the days when I could shoot whenever I wanted to,” Meeks said. “One hundred points in a game, it’s crazy. Probably never be broken again, it’s something that happened from a great player.”
But the guy who has come the closest disagreed.
“It probably won’t happen in our generation or the next, but it will happen,” Bryant told reporters. “Right place, right time, right team … the right opponent.”
The Sixers are honoring the 50-year anniversary during Friday’s game against the Golden State Warriors. Chamberlain died in 1999, but some family members are expected to be in attendance and fans will receive a small piece of the actual court that the feat was accomplished on.
