Pablo Torre Finds Out
Wilt Chamberlain and the Conspiracy Factory: We Unearthed the True Story of the 100-Point Game
Fri, 28 Feb 2025
It is the greatest individual performance in basketball history: Sixty-three years ago this weekend, a larger-than-life superhero conjured the supernatural. Why do so many people — including a player on the court — now think it was fake news? Our quest for irrefutable proof (and poetry) unpacks boxes that you won't find in the Hall of Fame: The recordings from author Gary Pomerantz, who spoke to 56 people in attendance and on the court. The tapes, which we unearthed from a rare-book library, a basement closet and a vault in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Plus: the last Warrior left standing to check the facts — and shake a fist at the naysayers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours. And today we're going to find out what this sound is.
I used to hate the fact that there was no video of it, but as time goes on, I think it kind of adds to the mystique of the game.
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You're listening to DraftKings Network. When you heard from us, Gary Pomerantz, that we wanted to do this topic because of what people had been saying on the Internet, were you excited?
My intuitive reaction was, here we go again. My second reaction was something approximating an eye roll. You know, it's a conspiratorial time.
Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas.
You go back to the 1960s, and there were still a lot of questions about the Kennedy assassination.
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Did Neil Armstrong really touch the moon, or was he in a studio somewhere in... In the United States. So it was that kind of a time. And now, you know, we're unfortunately a bit of a historically illiterate country. If there's no video, then it didn't happen. Well, we know the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but there's no video of that. We know about Lincoln at Gettysburg.
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Chapter 5: What was Wilt Chamberlain's impact on basketball during his era?
People know what happened 10 billion years ago. They know how the earth was created. They know what the Egyptians were talking about, what they were saying, even though that is like... Even though that it's six languages removed from what we're talking about right now. And nobody knows outside of a sheet of paper with crayon on it that says 100.
And on and on it goes across Reddit and TikTok and YouTube to the point where we here at Pablo Torre Finds Out got a voicemail about this topic at our detective agency hotline, 513-85-Pablo.
Hey, Pablo. Long time, first time. There's been a lot of stuff going around the internet lately about whether or not Wilkes scored 100 points because there's a lot of old footage from the 50s and 60s of the NBA, but nothing really about that supposed 100-point game.
And then we got another one.
Hi, Pablo. My name is Matthew. I have a question, and it's actually kind of a conspiracy theory that Perhaps only I believe in, but maybe others do, and we shall find out. It revolves around Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game. We have no video evidence of this happening, as far as I know, and the only photographic evidence of this is a locker room photo and a piece of paper that says 100 on it.
I'm not sure that I truly believe and trust that Wilt Chamberlain actually scored 100 points in a game. I know that sounds crazy, but I need your help.
Now, those callers sounded reasonable enough to us that we finally decided it was time to get to the bottom of what seems to be a global mystery. And the first person we called was Stanford professor Gary Pomerantz, the aforementioned author of the book Wilt 1962. And Gary immediately established something.
He established that one tricky thing about fact-checking Wilt Chamberlain is that Wilt Chamberlain's whole brand was to be larger than life.
Wilt was a luminous star at that time. He's just 25 years old. He's got a nightclub in Harlem called Big Wilt Smalls Paradise. Smalls Paradise dates the Halcyon days of the Harlem Renaissance. And Wilt walked through that place like he owned all of Harlem, like he owned all of New York. Red Fox, Etta James, Cannonball Adderley. Wilt's the greeter, the tallest greeter in NBA history.
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Chapter 8: How have perceptions of Wilt's achievements changed over time?
I'm getting the sense that the Mad Manchurian may have also earned that nickname because you also tried to hit Daryl with a chair.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that chair. It just sort of appeared in my head.
But I bring up Daryl Imhoff now not simply because you have this personal backstory with him, but because I need you to help fact-check something that he told Gary Pomerantz that we discovered in the course of fact-checking the story of that night. Because the allegation that Daryl makes, of course, is not that the 100 points did not happen. He was there.
He, in fact, personally was responsible for quite a number of those points, trying to guard Wilt. The allegation that Daryl Imhoff made on tape was this, quote, The 100-point game was a farce.
Well, I say sour grapes, kid. You know, you got smoked. And, you know, fouled out. And somebody else filled in for you. And you couldn't stop Wilt. Nobody could stop Wilt that night. So it's just sour grapes. I can just say your defense was a farce. That's why Wilt scored. If you want to be a farce, you know, it's... Maybe I should have punched him off a little more.
I don't think anybody could have guarded Wolf that night. I don't think Shaq at his very best could have guarded Wolf that night. Wolf was indomitable that night. Everything he threw up went in. It was a miracle day. And if Daryl thinks it was manufactured, it was manufactured by the Lord God himself. I've never heard that Darryl said that. That makes me angry. That makes me really angry.
He accused you guys of pouring it on.
Of course we poured it on. Absolutely we poured it on. We poured it on because we were going to help our teammates score 100 points. There's nothing wrong with that. What I saw was a destruction. Unless my eyes were failing me, I saw destruction.
So this is where I do need to jump in here and let cooler heads prevail for a second, for the sake of posterity, if nothing else. Because, yes, I have apparently goaded the bad Manchurian at age 86 back into bloodlust. But also because the thing that courses inside of Tom, the thing in his blood, as mentioned before, is really poetry.
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