Wilt Dead @ 63

["Belanger,Roger" <rbelange@foxboro.com>]

Tuesday October 12 5:53 PM ET 
NBA Great Wilt Chamberlain Dies
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Wilt Chamberlain, one of the most dominant players in the
history of basketball and the only player to score 100 points in an NBA
game, died Tuesday at 63, a Los Angeles Lakers spokesman said. 
Chamberlain's body was found by authorities who were called to his Bel-Air
home shortly after noon PDT. A fire department spokesman said Chamberlain
might have had a heart attack. 
Known as ``Wilt the Stilt'' and ``The Big Dipper,'' the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain
dominated the NBA from 1959 through 1973, when he played for the
Philadelphia (later the San Francisco) Warriors, the 76ers and the Lakers.
He scored 31,419 points during his career, averaging 30.1 points for his
career. 
He also led the league in career rebounding with 23,924. 
One of only two men named MVP and rookie of the year in the same season
(1959), he was also MVP in 1966 through 1968. He led the NBA in scoring
seven straight seasons, 1960 to 1966, and led the league in rebounding 11 of
his 14 seasons. 
One of his most famous records is the 100 points he scored in a single game
in the Philadelphia Warriors' 169-147 defeat of the New York Knicks on March
2, 1962, in Hershey, Pa. 
In the 1961-62 season with Philadelphia, he averaged a record 50.4 ppg. He
also was one of the most versatile big men ever, leading the league in
assists with 702 in 1967-68. 
Chamberlain led his team into the playoffs 13 times, winning two world
championships. The first came in 1966-67 with the Philadelphia 76ers, the
second in 1971-72 with the Los Angeles Lakers. 
His teams lost in the finals four other times and were beaten in the
conference final six times. 
Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics almost always seemed to be the nemesis
of Chamberlain-led teams, beating them twice in the championship series and
five times in the conference finals. Three times, a series was decided by a
seventh game that Boston won by either one or two points. 
A lifelong bachelor, Chamberlain made news after his basketball career by
claiming in an autobiography that he had made love to 20,000 women. 
``The women who I have been the most attracted to, the most in love with,
I've pushed away the strongest,'' Chamberlain said in a 1991 interview with
The Associated Press. ``There are about five women I can think of I could
have married. I cared for them a lot, but not enough to make a commitment.''