Chamberlain Breaks NBA Scoring Record

On Feb. 14, 1966, Wilt Chamberlain breaks NBA career scoring record at 20,884 points, which was previously held by Bob Petit, who played on the Milwaukee and St. Louis Hawks. Chamberlain’s record breaking score came on the way to earning his second MVP award during his first full season on the Philadelphia 76ers.

During the 1965-1966 season Chamberlain averaged 33.5 points and 24.6 rebounds a game, leading the league in both categories. The totals were his sixth highest scoring season of his career as well his third highest rebounding season.

Chamberlain would go on to finish his career with 31,419 points, as he led the NBA in scoring seven times, field goal percentage nine times, minutes played eight times, rebounding eleven times, and assists once.

Despite being such a great scorer, Chamberlain's main weakness was his notoriously poor free throw shooting, where he has the third lowest career free throw percentage in NBA history with 51.1% (based on a minimum of 1,200 attempts). Chamberlain claimed that he intentionally missed free throws so a teammate could get the rebound and score two points instead of one, but later acknowledged that he was a "psycho case" in this matter.

He committed surprisingly few fouls during his NBA career, despite the rugged play in the post. Chamberlain never fouled out of a regular season or playoff game in his 14-year NBA career. His career average was only 2 fouls per game, despite having averaged 45.8 minutes per game over his career. He had 5 seasons where he committed less than 2 fouls per game, with a career low of 1.5 fouls during the 1962 season, in which he also averaged 50.4 points per game. His fouls per 36 minutes (a stat used to compare players that average vastly different minutes) was a remarkable 1.6 per game.

Chamberlain was also responsible for several rule changes, including widening the lane from 12 to 16 feet, as well as changes to rules regarding inbounding the ball and shooting free throws.

Chamberlain is most remembered however for his 100-point game, which is widely considered the greatest basketball record of all-time. He is also only one of two basketball players, the other being Michael Jordan to have averaged at least 30 points per game over their entire career, but Chamberlain is the only player to average over 50 points a game for an entire season.

For his feats, Chamberlain was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, ranked no. 2 in SLAM Magazine's Top 50 NBA Players of All-Time and no. 13 in the ESPN list "Top North American athletes of the century" and voted the second best center of All-Time by ESPN behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on March 6, 2007.

Chamberlain’s record would hold up for over 15 years until Kareem Abdul-Jabar would break his record. After Abdul-Jabar broke Chamberlain’s record, Karl Malone and Michael Jordan have also surpassed his numbers, out ranking Chamberlain to fourth as they are second and third respectively behind Abdul-Jabar who is still the NBA’s All-Time leading scorer with 38,387 points.

Petit Scores 20,000

On Nov. 13, 1964, two-time NBA MVP Bob Pettit became the first player in NBA history to score 20,000 points in his career. Pettit spent his entire career with the St. Louis Hawks franchise. The 1964-65 season was the final one of his career. He would wind up scoring 20,880 points when all was said and done. He had a career average of 26.4 points per game.

In 1954, the Milwaukee Hawks selected Pettit in the first round of the NBA Draft. Many were skeptical about Pettit making the transition from college to the rough-and-tumble NBA. Rookies often struggle adjusting to the pro game, but not Pettit — in 1955 he won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award after averaging 20.4 points and 13.8 rebounds per game.

After the 1954-1955 season, the Hawks moved to St. Louis.

Pettit was moved to forward as a pro. "In college I played the standing pivot," he said in an April 1957 issue of SPORT magazine interview. "My back was to the basket. In the pros, I'm always outside. Everything I do is facing the basket now. That was my chief difficulty in adjusting, the fact that I had never played forward before."

In his second season, Pettit won his first scoring title with a 25.7 average, and led the league in rebounding (1164 for a 16.2 average). He was also named MVP of the 1956 NBA All-Star Game after scoring 20 points with 24 rebounds; he would win subsequent MVP All-Star Game honors in 1958, 1959, and 1962. He also won his first of two NBA regular season MVP awards (the other was in 1959).

In 1958, Pettit, Ed Macauley and Cliff Hagan led the Hawks to an NBA Championship, defeating the Bill Russell-led Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals (the Hawks had acquired Macauley and Hagan from Boston for the draft rights to Russell). Pettit put an exclamation point on the Hawks' 110-109 game 6 victory by scoring a then-playoff record of 50 points. Both teams would also meet in the 1957, 1960 and 1961 Finals, with Boston winning each time.

Pettit's league leading scoring average of 29.2 points per game in the 1958-59 season was an NBA record at the time, and he was named the Sporting News NBA MVP. In the 1960-61 season, Pettit pulled down 20.3 rebounds per game, making him one of only five players to ever break the 20 rebounds per game barrier. In the following season, he scored a career best 31.1 points per game.

His 12,849 rebounds were second most in league history at the time he retired, and his 16.2 rebounds per game career average remains third only to Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell.

Pettit was an NBA All-Star in each of his 11 seasons, was named to the All-NBA First Team ten times, and was name to the All-NBA Second Team once. Pettit still holds the top two NBA All-Star Game rebounding performances with 26 in 1958 and 27 in 1962, and has the second highest All-Star Game points per game average with 20.4 (behind only Oscar Robertson).

Pettit averaged at least 20 points per game and at least 12 rebounds per game in each of his 11 NBA seasons. No other retired player in NBA history other than Pettit and Alex Groza (who played only two seasons) has averaged more than 20 points per game in every season they've played (note: Michael Jordan averaged exactly 20 points per game in his final season).

In 1970, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and the Atlanta Hawks retired his no. 9 jersey.