Wilt Chamberlain is a true legend.
He's not just called a legend because he was a player from a bygone era. We know Wilt from stories passed down from those lucky enough to have interacted with him in any sort of way, because there's barely any footage of him playing. Even his 100-point game, his most infamous achievement, is only recorded through grainy photos, a stats sheet, and a raspy radio broadcast.
There's that story of Wilt out-lifting a young Arnold Schwarzenegger on the set of Conan the Destroyer. There’s the time he almost collapsed the seats around Rucker Park with the crowd he drew one summer. There's the story of Wilt dunking then lifting his defender in one motion. There’s that other time that Wilt, having never practiced high jump even once, won the Big 7 high jump competition for the University of Kansas. There's the time 43-year old Wilt beat Magic Johnson, Bernard King, Byron Scott, and AC Green in a pickup game with four UCLA freshmen as teammates.
It's reasonable to question most of these stories, especially those that involve Wilt fending off panthers. They could all just be hyperbole. But Wilt lived his life in hyperbole.
Take, for example, the best Wilt Chamberlain memorial – the NBA record books. The records Wilt holds range from the improbable, like averaging 50 points for an entire season, to the impossible like the 100-point game or the 55-rebound game. Anytime a player puts up an absurd number of points or rebounds or assists, the TV broadcasts usually put up a graphic of Wilt doing something even more unbelievable. It's in these records and mystical stories that Wilt became immortal.
We know everything about Steph Curry. We’ve seen his pre-game ritual. We know about his parents, his wife, his kids. We know how Steph ended up signing with Under Armour. We know how much Steph loves to golf. Almost all of Steph's shimmies are available in high definition.
Steph Curry is also a legend. But unlike Wilt who lived in the liminal space between reality and myth, Steph has made a career of realizing unbelievable things.
Curry was the first unanimous MVP in a game that was dominated by seven-footers. He, playing a style people thought would never result in a championship, was the engine of the winningest regular season team. Like Wilt, who forced the NBA to widen the key and create new goaltending rules, Steph changed the game with his hyper-efficient shooting.
So when Steph was closing in on Wilt’s Warriors scoring record, it was inevitable that something special was going to happen. Steph always had a flair for the moment. He needed barely nine minutes of game time to get the 19 points to pass Wilt. The other 34 points were just for the story.
It wouldn't have been a signature Steph Curry moment if he wasn’t devastating an opponent. The Denver Nuggets were good, they were exactly eight games better than the Warriors at the time. The Nuggets had an MVP front-runner and long athletic defenders to throw at Curry. None of that mattered.
Curry’s best trait – beyond the shooting, competitiveness, and charisma – is his reliability. We can always count on Steph to live up to the big moments. We can always count on Steph to blow away all our expectations.
There was no more apt way to become Mr. Warrior and break a Wilt Chamberlain record than playing like Wilt – dropping 50 and making it look easy. It was the best possible tribute to a pioneer that paved the way for not only basketball players, but athletes of color. If another Warrior does come along and break Steph's record, may he also do it in the most Wilt way possible.
53 points.
— NBA (@NBA) April 13, 2021
10 threes.
7 straight 30-point games.
3rd 50-point game of season.@warriors all-time leading scorer.@StephenCurry30. pic.twitter.com/epG9V43tAV
