Wilt Chamberlain's 100-Point Game

A quiet night in chocolate town

The game was not even played in a big city. The Philadelphia Warriors met the New York Knicks at the Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a small town better known for candy bars than basketball history. Only a few thousand fans showed up, there were no television cameras, and many New York reporters skipped the trip.

Wilt Chamberlain was in the middle of the wildest scoring season the league has ever seen. He averaged 50.4 points per game in 1961-62, so a big night from him was normal. A 100-point night was something else entirely.

Wilt stood about 7 feet 1 inch and moved like a sprinter. Opponents threw double and triple teams at him all season, and it rarely mattered. That year he also played nearly every minute of every game, averaging more than 48 minutes a night thanks to overtime periods.

How he got there

Wilt made 36 of 63 shots from the field. The bigger surprise was at the line. He was a famously poor free throw shooter, yet that night he hit 28 of 32, many of them shot underhanded. He also pulled down 25 rebounds.

As the total climbed past 70 and then 80, the Warriors began feeding him on nearly every trip, and the Knicks began fouling other Philadelphia players to keep the ball away from him. The Warriors fouled right back to get the ball again. Wilt reached 100 with less than a minute to go, the crowd poured onto the floor, and the game ended 169 to 147.

The photo that became the proof

Because nobody filmed it, the 100-point game lives on through a radio call, a box score and one famous photograph taken afterward: Wilt in the locker room holding a sheet of paper with 100 written on it. That simple image became one of the most recognized pictures in sports.

Today a marker in Hershey notes the spot. The arena is better known as a hockey barn, but basketball fans still make the trip to see where the number was written.

Still untouched

More than six decades later, no one has reached 100 in an NBA game. Bam Adebayo came closest with 83 points in March 2026, passing Kobe Bryant's 81 from 2006. The pace of play in 1962 was far faster, with many more shots per game, which helps explain the number. Even so, the record has a feeling of permanence: one man, one night, a round number no one has matched.

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