Wilt and the 100-Point Game Conspiracy

EPISODE 208: We (finally) unearthed the truth.

Today is the anniversary of one of the most famous performances in the history of sports.

But what most distinguishes Wilt Chamberlain’s single-game scoring record is that for each of the 100 points he scored on March 2nd, 1962, there now appears to be just as many questions about whether it ever happened.

There is no video footage of the game.

The radio broadcast was lost, only for snippets of it to suspiciously reappear decades later.

And the feat of scoring 100 is so fundamentally ridiculous — Kobe Bryant’s 81 is the second-most, all time — that the whole evening has been questioned, openly and virally, by all kinds of television hosts and current NBA players and pretty much everyone on YouTube. In fact, we here at Pablo Torre Finds Out have received multiple voicemails asking us to investigate this apparent conspiracy at our detective-agency hotline (513-85-PABLO).

And so, finally, we did.

The result: a fully reported, 50-minute documentary (note: our second of the week!) that not even the Basketball Hall of Fame — which has somehow never put up a Wilt exhibit — can rival. It’s based on months and months of work that our staff put into reporting and archival research and scouring never-before-heard recordings, in collaboration with Stanford University’s excellent Gary Pomerantz.

It’s a case study in why I wanted to do this show, like this, in the first place.

And it culminates in one of my favorite interviews ever — establishing how a historical deep dive has profound relevance to our Internet-brained present.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo