Jamie Samuelsen: If Wilt Happened Today…

By now, I'm sure you know that today is the 50 year anniversary of the night that Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game. He was playing for the Philadelphia Warriors and torched the New York Knicks for 100 on 36-for-63 shooting and 28-for-32 from the free throw line. This game holds a mythic quality because it wasn't televised. The only record of the game is the box score, the interviews and the indelible black and white photo for Wilt holding up the piece of paper that simply says 100.

The game is up there with Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak and Johnny Vander Meer's back-to-back no-hitters as the records that will never be broken. I actually think that 100 will be broken one day given the egos of professional athletes, the sorry state of defense in the NBA and the three-point line. Kobe Bryant scored 81 back in 2006. That's still 19 points short – but it's doable.

The fact that there is no video of the game only adds to the legend. And it got me to thinking – can you imagine if Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game on March 2, 1012 instead of March 2, 1962? (Cue Time Machine Sound effect)

I'm pretty sure that the following things would be true –

- ESPN would cut away from whatever they were showing to broadcast the final few moments live…because Jeremy Lin would be playing for the Knicks.
- Chamberlain would be on Sports Center, Letterman, Leno, Ellen, The O'Reilly Factor and Sesame Street within a week after the game.
- Barack Obama, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney would all seek his endorsement. They'd all invoke his name somehow into their campaign rhetoric. And one of them would certainly mispronounce his name.
- Skip Bayless would spend the next eight episodes of "First Take" trying to diminish the accomplishment and tell us why Wilt is selfish and how he's overrated (and why Tim Tebow is better).
- Sports Center would most likely lead with it – or they'd do a story on Peyton Manning first and then get to the Wilt game. (Steve Levy : History in Pennsylvania – but first here's Mort with the latest on Peyton's neck).
- ESPN Classic would show a continuous loop of the game, as they should.
- LeBron James would consider "taking his talents to the City of Brotherly Love."
- Literally thousands of groupies would want to sleep with Wilt and would likely be successful. (Coincidentally this was also a byproduct of the game 50 years ago.)
- David Stern would void the trade that eventually sent Wilt to the Lakers citing the "Best Interests of Basketball" and instead send him to the WNBA.
- Stern would also authorize the immediate printing of millions of Chamberlain-100 t-shirts, hats and sweatshirts and the owners would enjoy 100 percent of the profits.
In a weird way – I'm glad that a tape of the game doesn't exist. We'll never quite know what happened that night. Was he a ball hog? (Probably.) Were the Knicks the worst defensive team in basketball history? (Probably.) Did he really score 100 or was there a mistake in the scoring? (Probably….NOOOOOOO!) If it happened today – the game would be dissected, replayed, analyzed…and cheapened. The way it is now, it lives as the single greatest individual game in sports history…as it should be.