Auerbach had spent the summer at Kutsher’s Country Club, a resort in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. As part of their summer attractions, Milt Kutsher and some of the other resort owners hired the country’s top college basketball players, who worked as bellhops during the day and played on the basketball teams the resorts fielded. To coach his team, Kutsher had brought in Auerbach. While Kutsher usually hired only college students, there was that summer a high school kid in Philadelphia named Wilt Chamberlain who was such a phenomenal player that after watching him, Haskell Cohen, the public relations man for the NBA, had persuaded Kutsher to make him a bellhop. The first time Auerbach saw Chamberlain, moving along briskly in his bellhop uniform—striped pants, short-sleeved white shirt, bow tie—he just stood there and watched him walk. Just watched him walk. The kid was huge, but what Auerbach thought was incredible was how graceful he was for someone his size. A little while later, when he saw him on the basketball court, he realized that even though the kid was still in high school, he was comparable to the best college players Auerbach had ever seen.

Auerbach pushed Chamberlain hard during practices and tried to work with him on his moves, like guarding the pivot man, but Chamberlain, he found, was not a receptive student. Wilt was only sixteen, but because of his size and ability and all the press attention he’d already received, people even then had begun to treat him with awe, and it had gone to his head. Still, his talent was phenomenal, and so was his hustle. Even off the court he hustled, carrying guests’ luggage in and out of the hotel, pocketing tips, bringing trays of drinks to the patio. The NBA at the time had a territorial draft, which allowed each team to exploit the draw of local talent by giving it the right, regardless of its position in the regular draft, to acquire a top player graduating from a college within its territory. Which meant if Chamberlain went to a college in New England, Auerbach could claim him for the Celtics. “Why don’t you go to Harvard, kid?” Auerbach asked Chamberlain one day.

Auerbach was serious. He called Walter Brown, who was at his vacation house on Cape Cod, and urged him to come up and take a look at Chamberlain. “This is the most fantastic player I’ve ever seen,” Auerbach said. He added that it would be worth almost any amount of money to acquire him, and even suggested that Brown consider giving the Chamberlain family $25,000—just out and out bribe the mother and father—if Wilt would attend a college within the Celtics’ territory. Auerbach argued that no league rules specifically forbade payments to a potential player’s family, but Brown considered it underhanded. Then Eddie Gottlieb, owner of the Philadelphia Warriors, heard about Auerbach’s scheme. He considered Chamberlain a Philadelphia talent and was determined to have him play for the Warriors. Gottlieb believed Chamberlain would be capable of playing for the NBA as soon as he graduated from high school. But if Chamberlain decided to go to college, that was fine with Gottlieb. If he had to, he was willing to wait six more years to get him. But one thing was certain, at least in Gottlieb’s mind: Wilt Chamberlain would play for the Warriors. “If that kid even thinks about blowing town for Boston,” Gottlieb told Milt Kutsher, “I’ll turn your joint into a bowling alley.”

 

BY THE TIME Chamberlain was ready to go to college, not just Auerbach and Gottlieb but every coach who had ever seen him play, and many more who hadn’t, wanted to sign him. In early 1955, when a team of Philadelphia’s high school all-stars featuring Chamberlain was traveling through the Northeast playing all-star teams from other cities, sportswriter Bill Libby and New York Knickerbockers coach Joe Lapchick went out to White Plains, a New York City suburb, to watch Wilt.

Lapchick was astounded by Chamberlain’s performance. He was six feet five himself and had been one of the original tall men in the earliest days of pro basketball, back in the twenties, before becoming the coach at St. John’s University and then taking over the Knicks. In all that time he’d never seen anyone dominate a game, both on offense and defense, as thoroughly as Chamberlain did. Afterward, he and Libby went down to the locker room to meet Chamberlain.