NBA: Top 5 centers of all time

1. Wilt Chamberlain; 1959-1973, Philadelphia and San Francisco Warriors; Philadelphia 76ers and LA Lakers

Career Averages: 30.1 ppg; 22.9 rebounds; 4.4 assists

There’s just one word to describe Chamberlain. Incredible. How there ever existed such an astounding athlete, controversial sportsman, we may never know.

Chamberlain was probably the strongest player to have ever played in the NBA. He stood at 7’1″ and weighed 275 pounds. He was the only player to score 30+ PPG and pull down 20+ RPG in a season, a feat which he repeated 9 times. He holds the record for the maximum number of points scored in a single game with his 100 point performance.

He was a notoriously poor free throw shooter. However, he made up for it with his incredible athletic skills. He reportedly had a 50-inch vertical, which enabled him to compete as a track and field athlete too. Chamberlain was physically capable of converting a foul shot into a slam dunk without a running jump.

The Wilt-Russell rivalry is one of the most documented and intense ones in the history of any sport. Anything one did, the other wanted to top it. This led to one of the most exciting sequence of NBA finals series’, first between the Celtics and 76ers then between the Celtics and the Lakers. Out of a combined 8 such series’, the Russell led Celtics won 7 of them.

Chamberlain was in every definition, a Star. He was one of the highest paid athletes ever. He earned $65,000 a year before he entered the NBA when an average NBA player himself earned just $10,000 a year. He drove fast cars, and when he couldn’t fit into them, he designed and built one for himself at a whopping $750,000.

Wilt was also renowned as an incredible pick-up artist and ladies’ man. In his autobiography, A View From Above, he claimed that he had sexual relationships with 20,000 women. While this was most definitely exaggerated, there are many who wouldn’t put it past Chamberlain to achieve this feat, like so many other astounding ones he achieved with ease. Chamberlain died in 1999 of congestive heart failure.