(2 of 3)
Watch Him Walk. The son of a 5-ft. 8-in. handyman in Philadelphia, Chamberlain started drawing attention when he was 15 and playing junior-high ball. He was already 6-ft. 10-in. tall and towered over the other kids like a giraffe. But at first he yearned to be a track, not a basketball star. In high school, he could high-jump 6 ft. 4 in., and put the shot 45 ft. "I gave up track," he says simply, "because there wasn't any money in it." Concentrating on basketball at Philadelphia's Overbrook High School, Chamberlain averaged 36.3 points a game over a three-year span, spent his summers at a resort in New York's Catskill Mountains playing with college stars on a team coached by the Boston Celtics' Red Auerbach. Most overgrown teen-agers seem to have two left feet. Auerbach recalls being startled by Chamberlain's remarkable poise and his lynx-like grace on a basketball court. "The first time I saw Chamberlain," he says, "I just stood and watched him walk. Just watched him walk. It was incredible.''
College coaches watched him lope the length of a court in what seemed like five or six giant strides, and some 200 schools eagerly sought Wilt's services—for pay, of course. He was promised room, board, tuition, a car, plane rides home to Philadelphia and $60 a week "pocket money" to go to the University of Dayton, but Chamberlain decided on Kansas, partly because Coach Forrest ("Phog") Allen was the only recruiter who suggested that he could get an education at college too. In his sophomore year, Chamberlain led the Kansas Jayhawkers to the N.C.A.A. finals. Then he quit school, toured the world with the Harlem Globetrotters, and signed on with the Warriors.
Good, Clean & Green. For playing as nobody else does, Wilt Chamberlain gets paid more than anybody else (about $65,000 a year), and he spends it carefully, on himself. Unlike many Negro champions, he does not champion Negro causes. "The best way to help integration," he says, "is to live a good, clean life"—and Wilt Chamberlain's life has the good, clean smell of new money. He owns a swinging Harlem nightclub named Small's Paradise, a summer basketball camp in upstate New York, real estate in Philadelphia, a bulging portfolio of mutual funds, and a 38-apartment development in Los Angeles that he calls "Villa Chamberlain." He sports a sparkling three-carat diamond ring on his left pinky, lives in a comfortable five-room apartment, and rides around San Francisco in a $24,000 Bentley. "I love business," he says. "I love it! Love it! Love it! You have to love something to be successful at it. And if I continue to be this successful, I'll be a millionaire."