And Naulls had chased him up and down the court trying to tear off the rubber band he always wore on his wrist. It was like the guy was out to get him, like there was something personal going on. Also, Chamberlain had played exhibition ball with the Harlem Globetrotters for a year before turning pro, and since the actual games the Trotters played were little more than jokey pretexts for various basketball stunts, he’d picked up a few bad habits such as clowning around and walking with the ball.

But he was adjusting. A bigger problem for Chamberlain going into the game that night against the Celtics was that although he was surrounded by some good players such as Paul Arizin and Guy Rogers, the Warriors lacked Boston’s overall talent. That meant that while Bill Russell could stick to rebounding and rely on Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman to score, Chamberlain would have to play both defense and offense. He’d managed to do this so far against other teams, and the Warriors had won their first three games of the season. But he wondered if he’d live up to all the advance billing, if he could hold his own against the greatest defensive player in the league.

 

The Celtics fans, overwhelmingly white and working-class, had tended to have conflicting feelings toward Bill Russell, their enthusiasm for him as an athlete undercut by their resentment at the fact that not only was the team dominated by a black man, but he was aloof in manner and from time to time gave voice to his indignation over his country’s—and Boston’s—racial inequities. As a result, the crowd tended to reserve its affection for Bob Cousy, the talented local boy who’d come from Holy Cross and was one of the best ball handlers in the league. But on this night, as the announcer introduced Russell to the almost 14,000 fans in the Garden, the applause, in anticipation of the matchup with Chamberlain, was thunderous. The Tall Man, as some sportswriters had taken to calling him, was finally getting a little appreciation in his adopted hometown.

In mid-court before the tip-off, Russell and Chamberlain shook hands. Russell, unable to help himself, broke his vow not to look at Chamberlain and glanced up. The man was tall. Ever since joining the league two and a half years ago, Russell had been able to do pretty much what he had wanted to do on the court. Now he was facing a man who not only towered over him but could jump and dunk, had huge hands and the strength of a wrestler, and knew how to rebound and could also hit from the outside. In fact, Chamberlain went up so high when he took that outside jumper of his that it was more or less impossible to prevent the shot. How, Russell wondered, was he supposed to play him?

The referee tossed the ball into the air and they both leaped. Russell, finding that he was quicker on his feet, went into the air first and got the tip-off. After that, the game quickly turned into a matchup between Russell and Chamberlain, almost as if it were a form of single combat. For the sportswriters sitting courtside, it was an amazing sight to behold. Those who had watched Russell and Chamberlain play individually before had never seen either man seriously challenged for control of the ball. But tonight was different. It was as if only now had each of them found an opponent worthy of his own talent, for each appeared to be forcing the other to work harder, to stretch further, to demand more of himself.

It seemed that every time Chamberlain rose up in the air to launch his fadeaway jump shot, Russell rose up with him, his arm reaching up and out and over Chamberlain, requiring Chamberlain to try to go even higher. At the apex of their leaps, with their arms raised, the two men were more than twelve feet in the air, towering above the people sitting courtside and moving together in what seemed almost like a form of ballet. Jimmy Breslin, it was clear, had it all wrong with his notion that Wilt Chamberlain somehow represented the end of basketball. What the sportswriters were seeing that night seemed more like the beginning of basketball, the discovery of infinite new possibilities—for drama, for maneuvers and combinations, for nakedly awesome athleticism—in a sport that until then had failed to inspire much public excitement.

All in all, Chamberlain took thirty-eight shots, but he scored only four baskets when paired man-to-man with Russell. Once—and this shocked the sportswriters and electrified the fans—Chamberlain leaped up to make a fadeaway jumper and Russell leaped up so much higher that he was actually able to block the shot of the taller man, reaching out with his hand and swatting down the ball. Chamberlain scored twenty-two points on tip-ins and dunk shots, but Russell had him so frustrated that in the second half he resorted to hook shots, a maneuver he had scorned since college as a disgracefully amateurish junk move. He looked awkward shooting them, standing flat-footed on the floor, tossing the ball over the side of his head, and every single one of those hook shots missed.

While Chamberlain ended up scoring more points than anyone else in the game—thirty to Russell’s twenty-two—Boston won 115–106. When it was over, the Garden erupted. To Russell, standing on the court, the crowd’s emotion was so powerful that the arena felt as if it were shaking.