During the fourth quarter, the Knicks began fouling other players to keep the ball away from Chamberlain, and they also became deliberate on offense to reduce the number of possessions for Philadelphia.

Legendary Laker broadcaster Chick Hearn often told the story that after the game, he asked Baylor if it bothered him that Chamberlain had an extra 15 minutes to break the record.

[7] Rival center Bill Russell predicted, "[Chamberlain] has the size, strength, and stamina to score one hundred some night.

In November 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons held the ball for minutes at a time without shooting to limit the impact of the Minneapolis Lakers' Mikan.

[16][17] Warriors teammate Joe Ruklick thought that "the attitude [among white players in the NBA] was, in my opinion, '[Chamberlain] is a freak who will come and go.

[21] Chamberlain had spent the night before the game in New York City,[note 2] partying all night with a female companion before dropping her off at her home at 6 am[6][22] With no sleep and suffering from a hangover, he boarded the train to Philadelphia at 8 am, met several friends at the Philadelphia train station, and had a long lunch with them, thus almost missing the team bus to Hershey.

[32] The Knicks were shorthanded, with their starting center, Phil Jordon, out with an illness,[33] officially reported as influenza but it was widely suspected he was simply hung over.

[35][36] New York also had 6-foot-9-inch (2.06 m), 210-pound (95 kg), backup center Cleveland Buckner, a better shooter than a defender who Chamberlain had overpowered for an NBA record 28 points in one quarter two days earlier.

The Knicks' third center, Dave Budd, who alternated with the foul-troubled Imhoff at pivot, later stated that resistance was futile: You couldn't play [Chamberlain] conventionally because he was so big.

The only thing you could attempt to do was either front him, and in that case they'd try to lob it in to him, or beat him down the floor and set up where he wanted to get and force him out a couple of extra steps.

[53] Effectively, they played the opposite of what a normal club would do if they faced a deficit, willingly giving up many easy points instead of making attempts to rally back.

[55] Warriors coach Frank McGuire at one point pulled out his entire starting five, save Chamberlain, and replaced them with bench players.

Gary M. Pomerantz in his book Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era wrote that Chamberlain's usual "Dipper Dunk" was "a considerably less emphatic basket stuff, like a rock that barely ripples the pond.

[57] With 46 seconds left, Chamberlain got free from the five Knicks, jumped high and put the ball into the basket to hit the century mark.

[64][65][66] German sports journalist Gunter Bork specified that the interruption resulting from Chamberlain's 100th point lasted for nine minutes, after which play continued.

[47] On March 4, the Warriors played the Knicks again in Madison Square Garden, and Imhoff got a standing ovation for "holding" Chamberlain to 58 points.

The Bulletin wrote, "Thus was fulfilled a prophecy made the first time the magnificent 7'1" scoring star of the Warriors played a game in the National Basketball Association three years ago.

[81] The New York Daily News on Sunday wrote, "Basketball is not prospering because most normal sized American youngsters or adults cannot identify themselves with the freakish stars ... You just can't sell a seven-foot basket stuffing monster to even the most gullible adolescent.

"[84] Knicks' player Richie Guerin felt the Warriors broke a code of honor in sports by embarrassing an opponent and setting a record outside the normal flow of the game.

"[87] In a conversation with Naulls after the game, Chamberlain predicted he would win his NBA championships but still be known for his individualism, versus Russell, who was credited for making his team—the Boston Celtics—great.

By that time, the NBA had grown to be a popular sports league with average attendance of 13,000 fans per game and star players such as Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan.

[95] The Warriors' PR director Harvey Pollack said an impossible 40,000 people claimed to have seen the game, and some even testified it took place in Madison Square Garden.

[100] On the other hand, the game immortalized little-used Warriors reserve player Joe Ruklick as the man who gave Chamberlain the 100th point assist.

The photograph was actually a matter of improvisation: when Warriors PR manager Harvey Pollack entered the Warriors locker room, he took a paper and scribbled the number on it, and Associated Press photographer Paul Vathis[101] who was there at the game (not for professional reasons, but rather because he wanted to give his son a treat) took the now-famous photo.

[102] The closest any player has gotten to 100 points was the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant, who scored 81 in a 122–104 win over the Toronto Raptors on January 22, 2006.

[72][105][106] Whereas Chamberlain was fed repeatedly by teammates for inside shots in a blowout win, Bryant created his own shots—mostly from the outside—in a game which the Lakers trailed at halftime by 14 and did not pull away until the fourth quarter.

"[84] For a while, NBA Commissioner David Stern's office phone would play Campbell's call of the 100-point basket to callers on hold: "He made it!

[99][117] In 2014, Josh Pastner, then head coach of the Memphis Tigers, stated that his father, who was a ballboy for the Warriors, had taped the game starting in the second quarter.

[91] Oscar Robertson, a Hall of Famer, believes the NBA would have lost its small television contract and not survived without the emergence of black superstars.

For we were and will be for all time those who withstood the humiliation of racial quotas even to the point of the NBA's facing extinction because of retarded expression and stagnating growth.