The only hint that this is where the most amazing day in NBA history began is the white spray-painted graffiti at what was once 2294 1/2 Seventh Avenue: Smalls’ Paradise 2000. Otherwise, it’s just a boarded-up doorway in an abandoned building on the southwest corner of 135th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard.

Once upon a time, it was Big Wilt’s Smalls’ Paradise, and the joint was jumping. Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier and James Baldwin frequented the legendary Harlem nightclub to laugh at Redd Foxx and dance to music by the likes of Ray Charles, Arthur Prysock, James Brown. One of the waiters at Smalls’ was Malcolm Little, known later as Malcolm X. Towering above it all, taking it all in and bouncing his laugh off the walls, was the proprietor, Wilt Chamberlain.

But on this cold February morning, there are scant signs of life. An elderly woman in a red coat, dressed for church, walks by and asks if she can be of any help.

Do you know if this is where Wilt Chamberlain’s club was?

“Yes it was, right through that door,” says Dorothy DaCosta. Then she giggles. “I danced with him.”

Really?

“I was with friends, and he came over to our table and asked if I would like to dance. Of course I would -- you can imagine how a 22-year-old girl fresh from Jamaica would feel. I was so delighted. I know what they said about Wilt, but he wasn’t fresh at all. Very pleasant, very respectful. I wish I could remember the name of that song, but I do know it was slow. I had to look up and up and up to see his face.”

Dorothy DaCosta looks up at the sky and smiles, transported back some 40 years.

	Listen in as Wilt scores his 100th point.

Here’s the big fourth quarter, and everybody is thinking, How many is Wilt gonna get? He’s got 69 going in ... and here’s another one! ... 71 points for Wilt Chamberlain. -- Bill Campbell, broadcasting for WCAU Radio on March 2, 1962, from Hershey, Pa.

Willie Naulls, his foe that night and friend for life, calls it “A Night in Flight.” On 3/2/62, a Friday, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in the Philadelphia Warriors 169-147 victory over the New York Knickerbockers before a crowd of 4,124 at the half-filled Hershey Arena. He was 36 of 63 from the field, 28 of 32 from the foul line. He had 23 points in the first quarter, 18 in the second, 28 in the third and 31 in the fourth. Now go back and read those numbers with this thought: The Knicks were trying their damnedest to keep him from scoring.

While the stats are indisputable, pretty much everything else about that game is subject to interpretation. Keep in mind that the NBA in 1962 was relatively small-time. The game wasn’t televised so there’s no tape or film, and only one Warriors beat reporter, Jim Heffernan of the Philadelphia Bulletin, bothered to make the 85-mile trip to Hershey, where the team spent its preseason and played at least one home game each year. The only photographers there arrived in the second half after getting word something special was happening.

Time plays tricks with memory. Wilt got to Hershey either by bus or by Bentley. It was a clear night, or maybe it was snowing. The rims were or were not soft. It did or didn’t matter that Knick center Phil Jordan and Warrior captain Tom Gola couldn’t play that night. The game did or did not end when fans stormed the court after Wilt’s 100th point. The final basket was a finger roll or a dunk. Wilt drove back/got a ride back to New York (where he kept an apartment) with Naulls/a bunch of Knicks, and went home/to Smalls’ to sleep/celebrate. And about the game ball -- don’t even ask.

If Wilt hadn’t died on Oct. 12, 1999, at the age of 63, he might be able to clear up some of the discrepancies. Then again, Wilt himself got a few things wrong about that night.

The game’s participants are in agreement about this, though: Wilt Chamberlain was the greatest athlete they’ve ever seen. That he was 7'1" just added to the enormity of his talents. “You know what playing against Wilt was like?” asks Jumpin’ Johnny Green, who had six points for the Knicks. “It was like going back to biblical times and playing Samson.” Wilt’s strength was legendary, but so were his speed, his jumping ability -- he sprinted, high-jumped and shot-putted at Kansas -- and his dexterity. Wilt played one year for the Harlem Globetrotters out of college while waiting to become NBA-eligible, and it showed in his behind-the-back passes and Dipper Dunks. As York Larese, who scored nine for the Warriors and now works as a scout for the Indiana Pacers, says, “I keep looking for another Wilt, but I doubt I’ll ever find one.”

… The big fella’s just a magnificent athlete. Jimmy Brown of the Cleveland Browns is a great friend of his, and he told me the other day that while he’s never lost to anyone in arm wrestling, he needed 23 minutes to beat Wilt …

The most amazing thing about that night may be that Wilt didn’t get any sleep the night before. He closed down Smalls’ at 4 a.m. on March 2. Where he went from there is a matter of conjecture. But here’s Wilt’s account from A View From Above, the 1991 autobiography in which he claimed to have slept with 20,000 women: “Because I’d been kept busy by an ‘encounter’ or two (or three), I took the train to Philly, having had absolutely no sleep the night before. I didn’t sleep on the train, afraid I might miss my stop and end up in Washington, D.C. On the bus ride from Philadelphia to Hershey, about a two-hour trip, I spent the whole time talking to my best friend, Vince Miller. We arrived at the arena in Hershey at 3:30 p.m., and I spent the rest of the time before the game shooting a rifle at a penny arcade. I completely destroyed all existing shooting records there -- an omen of things to come.”

The trouble is, nobody on the Warriors remembers Wilt being on the bus. (Wilt made so many trips from his apartment in New York to Philly that he could have easily gotten confused.) And Vince Miller, his friend from their days at Philadelphia’s Overbrook High and later a successful high school basketball coach, doesn’t remember being on the bus with Wilt. Miller is sure of one thing: “Hershey was probably his least favorite place to play.”

Hershey (pop. 20,000) is in Pennsylvania Dutch country, just east of Harrisburg, and if you like chocolate, this would be your Mecca: The streetlights are in the shape of Hershey’s Kisses and the smell of candy fills the air. It’s about 150 miles from New York City -- and about a million miles from Harlem.

The Hershey Arena, a sort of Art Deco hangar, was built in 1936, the year of Wilt’s birth. Chamberlain’s recollection of the rifle in the penny arcade is accurate. The Warriors had time to kill before the game, the arena was sprinkled with pinball and arcade machines, and Wilt would play anything. That’s another thing everybody who knew him agrees on -- he was a joy to be around. “He loved the world,” says Cal Ramsey, who played against him in the NBA and became a close friend. “I wish the world had loved him back.” But, as Wilt once said, “Nobody loves Goliath.”

As a team, the Knicks certainly didn’t love Wilt. Familiarity breeds contempt: Back then, they played each other 12 times a season. “We didn’t like each other very much,” says Paul Arizin, who scored 16 for the Warriors that night. “You know the way Wilt used to wear a rubber band around his wrist for good luck? Well, the Knicks would come out with rubber bands around their own wrists just to try to psych him out.” Before the game, Warrior coach Frank McGuire showed the players some New York newspapers in which Eddie Donovan, coach of the last-place Knicks, was quoted as saying they were going to run Chamberlain into the ground. They should’ve let the sleepless god lie.

He’s just tied the record for most points in a game, and there’s 10:25 to go. Attles in to Chamberlain ... he’s got it, 78 points, and the Warriors on the bench are jumping for joy …

Jim Heffernan had ridden out to Hershey with Dave Zinkoff, the Warriors legendary public address announcer. He was the only beat reporter covering the game because the Warriors were already locked into second place and, well, the trip to Hershey was a pain. “I had no inkling of what was about to take place,” says Heffernan, who went on to a long and distinguished career as an NFL spokesman. “Even in the first half, when Wilt had 41 points, that was no big deal because he had had 78 earlier in the season. What we did notice were his free throws.” Chamberlain was notoriously erratic at the foul line (.511 career), but in Hershey, he made all nine first quarter attempts and 13 of 14 in the first-half.

“Those foul shots should tell you something,” says Donnie Butcher, a Knick that night and later the coach of the Detroit Pistons. “Wooden backboards. Rims abused by coal miners’ kids. Taking nothing away from Wilt, I’d have to say the balls weren’t exactly bouncing off the iron that night.”

It’s nice to know the Knicks and Warriors are still contesting the game. “That’s bull about the soft rims,” says Al Attles, who was Philadelphia’s starting 2 guard that night. “There wasn’t anything unusual about them. Wilt earned every one of those 100 points. ’Course, he couldn’t have got them without me. I was 8-for-8 from the field, so the Knicks had to concentrate on stopping me.” At which Attles, a vice president with the Golden State Warriors, lets out his basso profundo laugh.

Wilt hasn’t touched the ball for two minutes now … New York is holding the ball as long as the 24-second clock will allow … Guerin fouls Rodgers, and the crowd is serenading him with boos.

Richie Guerin led the Knicks with 39 points that night, but he would later say the whole thing was a mockery. Indeed, the fourth quarter was a foulfest as the Knicks tried to send everybody but Chamberlain to the line, and the Warriors responded by fouling, then lobbing court-length passes to Wilt. But Naulls, who had 31 points, says, “I thought we could have won it if we weren’t so worried about Wilt getting 100.”

Darrall Imhoff, the backup center assigned to cover Wilt, fouled out late in the fourth. The crowd chanted, “Give it to Wilt.” Zinkoff counted off Wilt’s points with each basket as all 4,124 spectators gravitated down toward the floor. McGuire sent reserve forwards Ted Luckenbill and Joe Ruklick in to help Attles and Guy Rodgers, who had 20 assists that night, feed the ball to Wilt.

He has 98 with 1:01 left, he can make it easily … Rodgers into Chamberlain, misses, Luckenbill rebound, pass to Chamberlain, misses again, Luckenbill rebound, back to Ruklick, into Chamberlain … he made it! He made it! A Dipper Dunk! He made it! They’ve stopped the game. The fans are all over the floor. One hundred points for Wilt Chamberlain!

Many accounts of the game say it ended there, with 46 seconds left on the clock. “I would beg, borrow and steal money to bet that the game stopped at that point,” says Attles. But, as Campbell’s call of the game makes apparent, they cleared the floor and resumed play. And if you listen to Joe Ruklick, there was one more bit of drama.

Ruklick, a 6'9" center out of Northwestern, was then in his third season in the league, just like Chamberlain. Once play resumed, Ruklick got the ball and was fouled. “Before I went to the line, I told Wilt, ‘I’m dumping’ -- meaning I was going to purposely miss so he could get the rebound. But Willie Smith, the referee, overheard me. ‘You do that, kid, and I’ll wipe this whole game off the books.’ He smiled, but imagine how I felt. I was gonna blow it for Wilt. I was so nervous, I missed anyway.”

Clanked it so badly, in fact, that Bill Campbell thought he did do it on purpose:

He deliberately throws it off the backboard but Chamberlain can’t get to it … that’s it! One hundred points for Wilt as the Warriors win 169 to 147. There’s pandemonium in Hershey!

That’s right. Wilt might have had 102 points that night. Not quite as magical as 100.

In the chaotic Warriors locker room, Heffernan scrambled for quotes while PR man Harvey Pollack tried to set up a shot for the photographers. He asked Heffernan for a piece of copy paper, then wrote the number 100 on it and handed it to Wilt. That’s the picture that became the icon. “Nice to know I had a hand in that,” says Heffernan.

All the Warriors were delirious with glee. All but Chamberlain. “I still see him,” says Attles. “Sweat dripping off, a glass of milk in one hand -- he had a bad stomach -- and a stat sheet in the other.

And he’s shaking his head. ‘What’s the matter, big fella?’ I asked him. And he said, ‘I never thought I’d ever take 63 shots.’ To which I said, ‘Yeah, but you made 36 of them!’ ”

Pollack, in the meantime, was running around like a madman. “Besides being the publicist and head statistician,” says Pollack, who’s still with the 76ers, “I’m filing for the AP, UPI and the Inquirer. I’ve been in the NBA for 56 years, and that night was one of them. On the way home to Philly, I told the driver, ‘Pull over at the next bar, I need a drink.’ You know what the worst part of it was? I was the only guy on the Warriors who didn’t sign the ball.”

Ah, the ball. According to Pollack, after Wilt’s 100th point, the ball was taken out of play, and entrusted to Pollack, who later brought it into the locker room, where everyone -- but him -- signed it. Ruklick says that he took the game ball and slipped it into Chamberlain’s duffel. Whatever, the ball was later placed on display in the Warriors offices at the Sheraton in downtown Philadelphia; Pollack assumed that when the Warriors moved to San Francisco in 1962, the ball was given back to Chamberlain. According to Ruklick, Wilt kept the ball and gave it away to a dear friend years later. “Wilt did things like that,” says Ruklick. “Once, when my son was sick in the hospital, Wilt sent him his first Kansas jersey. Somebody offered us $6,000 for it, but we would never sell.” A few years ago, a fan said he had the ball and tried to sell it, but his claim was shot down.

In his book, Chamberlain says of his ride home to New York: “Willie [Naulls] drove and I took the front passenger seat. In the backseat sat two other Knicks. Within a mile, I was fast asleep and snoring … When they let me off at my apartment on 97th Street and Central Park West, I said to them, ‘You guys are sure nice to this SOB. Letting me score a hundred points, then giving me a ride all the way back to my apartment.”

Nice story. Only the way Naulls remembers it, Wilt was driving, and it was just the two of them: “If he were still alive, I’d tell him his mind was playing tricks. He must have confused that night with another trip home from Hershey. I’m certain he was driving a car that belonged to his manager, Ike Richman, who lived in Philly. Lord, I wish Wilt were alive. It was a blessing to have known him.”

Naulls now shepherds Willie Naulls Ministries in Gainesville, Fla., and he once wrote a piece entitled “A Night in Flight for Wilt Chamberlain” for his newsletter. “We talked a little about the game that night, about how the Knicks could’ve won if we hadn’t been so worried about him scoring 100 points. But mostly we talked about all the players we knew from college and the playgrounds who belonged in the NBA but were kept out because of a quota. Then he dropped me off in Montclair, N.J., where I lived, and continued on into the night.”

Who knows where? Smalls’ was still open.

… and now a word from Rambler.

It’s called the Hersheypark Arena nowadays, but that’s about the only thing that’s changed. The first four rows of seats are wooden. The scoreboards, meant for the AHL Hershey Bears, predate 1962. There’s a basketball court on the floor, meant for a state high school tournament, though it’s not the same one the Warriors and Knicks played on 40 years before. In fact, there’s little to commemorate that night, just a plaque in the lobby with Wilt holding the 100 sign. There are the numbers of legendary Bears hanging from the rafters, but no No. 13 for Wilt. He was just passing through.

Wait, there’s a shooting game off in the alcove called Zero Pain. But it has its own hand-written sign saying, “Out of Order.” Shawn Koppenhaver, the intern giving the tour, is hard-pressed to come up with anything more to stir the ghosts. “I’m not sure which locker room the Warriors used that night,” he says, “but I can show you one.”

Room 133 is straight out of the past, with hooks and shelves instead of cubicles, and an antique, wooden, contoured training table. No smell of chocolate in here; just years of sweat. Maybe -- just maybe -- this is where Wilt, sweating and drinking milk, looked at the stat sheet and shook his head.

Then Shawn says, “By the way, this is where the Globetrotters dressed on Valentine’s Day.”

This article appears in the March 18 issue of ESPN The Magazine.