FanHouse Wilt Chamberlain

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Friday, there are 11 days remaining.

The NBA All-Star Game every year is filled with players who never score 2,000 points in a single season.

Karl Malone did it a record 11 consecutive seasons, the most significant statistic he recorded during one of the greatest careers in NBA history.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Tuesday, there are 28 days remaining.

For one night, Wilt Chamberlain felt like a little guy.

He stood at the foul line and drilled free throws as if he were Oscar Robertson, Jerry West or some other sharpshooting guard from his era.

The result was Chamberlain, a 51.1-percent career marksman, hitting 28-of-32 free throws. That showing is a primary reason why the big man was able to become the only player ever to score 100 points in a game as his Philadelphia Warriors beat New York 169-147 on March 2, 1962 in Hershey, Pa.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Wednesday, there are 48 days remaining.

It might be the most remarkable, most unbreakable record in NBA history. And it's not his 100-point game.

It's only fitting that larger-than-life Wilt Chamberlain holds the record that never will be broken, and never will be approached.

NBA games are only 48 minutes, yet Chamberlain averaged 48.5 minutes during his remarkable 1961-62 season, a feat that goes behind Herculean, putting today's so-called Ironmen to shame.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Wednesday, there are 55 days remaining.

There are no cheap records in the NBA. But one of the most eye-popping records Wilt Chamberlain holds, all things considered, is his mark for most rebounds in a game: 55, captured against Bill Russell's Celtics early in the 1960-61 season. The final score of that game (on November 24, 1960) was 132-129.

Interestingly enough, it was Russell's record that Wilt broke. (Russell had 51 rebounds against the Syracuse Nationals late in the 1959-60 season.) But as was so often the case in the Wilt/Russell rivalry, while Wilt got the record, Russell got the win.

Every Tuesday this summer, two of our NBA experts will go at it with a Debate in the Paint. This week, the topic is Michael Jordan and his upcoming induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Is Michael Jordan the best player in all of basketball history?

Hey, I drew the short straw. So, I don't want to hear it. It's come down to me to argue that Michael Jordan isn't the greatest player in NBA history.

Don't get me wrong, I can do it. It's just that I don't go out of my way to pick a fight and this would seem to be doing just that. No, I don't think Jordan's the greatest. But I also know it's tough to win. Hence, the short straw. Nevertheless, here goes ...

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Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Saturday, there are 59 days remaining.

Without hyperbole or exaggeration, we may never see another individual dominate team sports that way Wilt Chamberlain did over his 14-year career.

And yet, as strange as it sounds, Chamberlain's career almost feels incomplete, at least when you consider he was robbed of two seasons before his NBA career even began. Just like how archaic NCAA rules kept him from joining Kansas' varsity team as a freshman in 1955-56, NBA rules prohibited him from being drafted immediately after he left college early in 1958, prompting the best basketball player in the world to spend his first year as a pro barnstorming with the Harlem Globetrotters.

In the video after the jump, a young Chamberlain is interviewed shortly after he was finally drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors in 1959, explaining why he turned down more money to stay with the Globetrotters for the chance to play in the NBA.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Friday, there are 67 days remaining.

Scoring 100 points in an NBA game was such a phenomenal feat that it may never be matched. Yet that century mark isn't what defined Wilt Chamberlain as the greatest scoring machine in NBA history.

A lot of people can do things once.

Kobe Bryant scored 81. David Thompson had 73. Elgin Baylor and David Robinson each managed 71. Michael Jordan hit 69 and Pete Maravich scored 68.

The magic number is 67.

If you could spend eternity with one person, who would it be?

A lot of American males would say Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately, she's out of the picture unless you happen to have an extra $4.6 million lying around.

That's what the crypt above Monroe's final resting place is going for, pending the next bid on eBay. The widow of the man currently interred there is selling the world's most coveted final resting place.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Thursday, there are exactly 75 days remaining.

There are former NBA greats that when they enter an arena today, they quickly attract a crowd of well-wishers and autograph-seekers, drawn like moths to a bright light after dark. Everyone wants to get close for a look or a touch.

Then there is Bill Russell, who came to watch the Celtics/Magic playoff series in Orlando two months ago. When he entered, the crowd didn't swarm. It parted, stood back and watched from a distance, too awed by his presence to approach.

They wondered how he once walked on water.

Dwight Howard is on the verge of making history and no one seems to notice. He's averaging 2.9 blocks and 14.0 rebounds a game, putting him on pace to become not only the youngest player to lead the league in blocked shots (beating out Marcus Camby by nearly a year) but also only the fifth player in NBA history to lead the league in blocks and rebounds in the same season.