Scoring by Steph brings reminder of Wilt

He was a big man. Literally and significantly. At 7-foot-1, 270 pounds, Wilt Chamberlain would be hard to miss; also in various categories, on a running track, or in basketball scoring statistics, hard to catch. 

But Steph Curry has caught him, overtaken him. With an asterisk, maybe.

Steph scored 53 points on Monday night and broke the record for total points while playing for the Warriors — a mark that, with Curry seemingly years from retirement (he’s 33), is destined to grow and grow.

And what Steph did was not only remind us of his remarkable skill but also of Wilt’s, whose game was unique, both for his style and of an era.

Chamberlain, who started with the Warriors as a rookie in Philadelphia — he was (laughter) a territorial pick, but more about that later — through the team’s move to San Francisco before the 1962-63 season.

The team struggled. “Wilt scores 50, Warriors lose” was a frequent headline in one of the city’s three dailies at the time, the Chronicle, Examiner or Call-Bulletin. Then they did win, making the NBA finals in 1964 with the help of rookie Nate Thurmond.

But times got bad again. Wilt reportedly griped about the playoff gift from owner Franklin Mieuli, and Mieuli traded Chamberlain to the new team in Philly, the 76ers.

Back home again for Wilt. In front finally for Steph.

“To be anywhere near him in any record book or now be on top, it’s surreal and it’s wild,” Curry said after the game. “If you grow up in the game of basketball and you hear [Chamberlain’s] name, you know it’s something extremely special, no matter what it is.” The Warriors had been allowed to take him back in 1959 in something called the territorial draft, which allowed NBA teams to take local prospects, even though he had gone to the University of Kansas.

Wilt played 429 games for the Warriors and scored 17,783 points, averaging 41 points a game. Curry already has played 745 games and is averaging 25. This is not to knock Curry. This is to appreciate Chamberlain.

So many of Curry’s points have come on 3-point field goals. There was no 3-pointer in the league until 1979; Wilt retired in 1973.

Not that Chamberlain would have shot many threes.

In that 1962 Philly Warriors game in Hershey, Pa. (the NBA would go anywhere), the night he scored 100, Wilt was 28 of 32 from the line. And in 1972, when Chamberlain was in his mid-40s, on a bet with John Trapp, he hit five 3-point range shots in a row, all hook shots. All swishes.

Wilt, who died in 1999 at 63, was unique, an athlete. He ran the 100 at Philly’s Overbrook High. He high jumped 6-8 and broke 50 seconds in the quarter mile at Kansas. He became a top beach volleyball player. As a publicity gimmick, he agreed to box Muhammad Ali, but the fight never came off.

An autobiography, the one in which he claimed he slept with 20,000 women, was subtitled “Just like any other 7-foot black millionaire who lives next door.” Next door if you resided in the posh Bel-Air section of Los Angeles.

During an interview one time, the conversation, naturally, turned to the 100-point game. “I knew I had a lot of points,” Chamberlain told me, “but not how many. The fans starting chanting, “Hundred, hundred. I thought they were crazy.”

That record sorely will last forever — Kobe Bryant scored 81 in 2006 — unlike Wilt’s total with the Warriors. It did last half a century.

Now it belongs to Steph Curry, who understands what it all means. Swish!