Wilt: A remembrance

When Wilt Chamberlain died, he left at least 20,000 (by his own estimate) female hearts grieving. I also loved Wilt, but not in that fashion.

Wilt wooed and won me early. I was barely a teen, but watching that big galoot play basketball — well, it was love at first sight.

“The Stilt,” one of Wilt’s monikers, perfectly describes the young player I remember. Long and lithe, with a 50-inch vertical jump, Wilt ran the floor like a great kangaroo. He was bigger, faster and stronger than everyone, so absurdly dominant that watching him you’d laugh out loud, for the sheer preposterous joy of it.

Along with his other-worldly abilities, Wilt was more animated than anyone – a man of infinite gestures. The splayed hands, the wince, the head thrown back in disgust – all these were Wilt trademarks, registering the frustration of a man infernally put-upon.

You had to laugh, seeing Wilt deflated at the foul line, having clanked another one, or bent over, beseeching a referee. The idea of sympathy for a man that large!

Everything about Wilt was a little cartoonish, including those statistics he engraved in stone. “My records are unbelievable,” he observed, accurately if un-humbly. These include averaging 50 points a game in a season, logging 48.5 minutes per game that same season (an NBA game is 48 minutes long), and never, ever fouling out of a game.

As for the 100 points he put up in one game, professional players ever afterward (before Kobe, that is) could only shake their heads in wonder.

Despite all of Wilt’s patently unfair advantages, he saw himself as an underdog. Sometimes you had to agree. Wilt was big, but what could one man, no matter how big, do against thousands?

“The world is made up of Davids,” Wilt said, “and I’m Goliath.”

Wilt could never do enough. Sure, he put up big numbers, said the Davids, but how many championships did he win? Wilt won two, a number that most NBA players would kill for, but a total pitifully inadequate to the universal expectations.

Never mind that Bill Russell, Wilt’s eternal tormentor, was surrounded by Hall-of-Famers, while Wilt was, for most of his career, a man alone. If Wilt was so great, he should have won more.

Wilt always let the Davids bring him down. If what he did wasn’t good enough, why, then, he’d do more. His inferiority complex impelled him to lead the league in assists one season, and after basketball to try boxing, coaching, beach volleyball and the marathon.

It compelled him to prove himself again and again – even in the boudoir, the Freudians will say.

Wilt’s craving for acceptance, often plaintive, was what made him mortal, finally. Had he maintained an Olympian remove, we would have revered him. Instead, he wrote dumb books and did talk shows, harping and harping on his prowess. He became a figure of fun.

As Wilt grew ridiculous, so did his records. We dismissed them, and him, as outlandish. The more he hectored us, the more we laughed. In the end, Wilt had cut himself down to our size.

But no one who ever saw him in his prime will ever forget him. He was power wedded with grace, phenomenally fast, wondrously imposing – a Prometheus in shorts.

Wilt’s at peace now. And he’s coming into his own. People look at the numbers and gape. The great deeds are acknowledged. Friends and foes grow older and mellower, and remember Wilt with fondness. And my emotions are stirred, thinking of my old flame.

I see him crouch, palming the ball like a grapefruit. I see him scowl, annoyed at the gnats swarming about him. I see him soar – and my heart soars with him.

There was a giant in those days.