Gary Pomerantz
speaker
58 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Gary Pomerantz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
If somebody walked into the arena and they see the Warriors fouling and the Knicks stalling, they're going to think the Knicks are ahead by 20, not the Warriors. That's where it breaks down.
Whether or not it became a farce is a serious question. You know, when the structure of the game breaks down and the team that's 20 points behind is stalling, something's weird, something's strange.
Well, there's a guard named York Larisi. And he's leading the fast break. And so he doesn't see Wilt behind him, but he hears the big fella, the mighty Huff and Puff. He feels the vibration of the floor when Chamberlain's moving. And so he just, as he's going straight at the basket, he doesn't distribute left or right. He just sort of throws the ball up.
and continues on underneath the basket, past the baseline, and out of play, at which point he looks back and sees Wilt, the mighty dipper, grabbing the ball, fully extended, my arms leaving the screen, and then slams it in one movement.
Well, Wilt would have three attempts at the 100-point basket. And in fact, one of them came after he scored on that slam dunk to hit 98. He started to run down court and quickly turned around and stole the ball. And missed it from around the free throw line. Then he'd get two more attempts. And there's 50 seconds left, and now the Warriors have the ball.
And Guy Rogers, who would have 20 assists on this night, a wonderful passer, he throws the ball down court, length of the court, to Wilt, who jumps, catches it, because the next tallest Nick is five inches short.
And Ted Luckenbill, a rookie, comes in, gets the rebound, gets it to Wilt again.
He misses. Luckenbill again.
An adrenalized moment for the fans and for Wilt until he gets to the locker room and sees the statuette. He's sitting next to Al Adels. And he's shaking his head, and Adels says, what's the matter, big fella? He said, I can't believe I took 63 shots, 21 of them in the fourth quarter. And Adels said, that's okay. You made 36 of them. That's all right.
The criticism against Wilt is not his athleticism. It's always that he cared more about himself and his own statistics rather than the greater good of the team. And this night, he thought, for many years, reflected that criticism. in a big way.
Harvey Pollack was a legend in Philadelphia basketball. He was an employee of the Philadelphia Warriors, then the Philadelphia 76ers, for six decades. And at the time this game is being played, he's known as the octopus because he would send out a Christmas card every year with the octopus, each arm representing another thing he did. On this night, when Wilt scores 100th,
Harvey is the statistician. He is a publicist who's got to arrange any interviews. He's writing the game story for the Philadelphia Inquirer who didn't care enough about it to send anybody. He's writing for AP and he's writing for United Press. That's a lot of work. And in fact, when he finished writing, the scorekeeping and added stuff up, he thought, oh my, what if Will ends up with 98 points?
Well, you know, one of the things you hear on the radio is I think three times the final score is 169 to 150. Yeah, I was going to mention this. Yeah.
And no one could reconcile that for me. I think it was just sort of this slapdash nature of the whole night. And this was one more aspect of it. Oh, yeah, the Knicks. Well, it doesn't matter what the Knicks got. You know, all that matters is what Will got.
Pollock looks around and says, Heff to Jim Heffernan, the sports writer of the Philadelphia Bulletin, let me borrow a sheet of paper. And he takes out what was a magic marker. I don't think they had Sharpies in 1962. I may be wrong on that. And he writes 1-0-0. And it's the backstory to this classic photo.
And that might be the best picture in basketball history because of what it represents and who it represents. It's the dipper on his night. Remember, this is a time when the NBA, even its statistics in the way stats were kept, They didn't count blocked shots. Somebody said, how many shots did Will block? I don't know. I don't know. We just have the numbers that they kept.
Did the Knicks score 147 or 150? I don't know. I don't know. But to me, it was about getting to the essence of this story. There are some questions. Whether or not it happened is not a question.
Or in the words of Gary Pomerantz... And, you know, the baseball great Ted Williams used to say his dream was that when he walked down the street, people would point at him and say, there goes the greatest hitter in baseball history. Wilt came to realize that people would point at him as he walked down the street and say, there goes the guy who scored 100 points in a game. And he came to like it.
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