How it unfolded
The Philadelphia Warriors and New York Knicks played a regular-season game at a neutral-site small-town arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The crowd was 4,124, with no television broadcast and no video record. Wilt Chamberlain scored 23 points in the first quarter alone and reached 41 by half-time. When he hit 69 through three quarters, the public address announcer began calling out each point as he scored it. Chamberlain, a career 51-percent free-throw shooter, made 28 of 32 that night. In the fourth quarter, the Knicks began holding other Warriors to keep the ball away from Chamberlain, and Philadelphia responded by immediately fouling New York's ball-handlers to get the ball back. With 46 seconds left, a Joe Ruklick pass set up his 100th point. Fans stormed the court, effectively ending the game on the spot, and the remaining time was played out as a formality. The final score was 169-147. Chamberlain made 36 of 63 field goals, grabbed 25 rebounds and played all 48 minutes. The only record of that night is a radio broadcast of the fourth quarter and a single photo of him in the locker room holding a sheet of paper that reads "100."
Why it still matters
This match permanently fixed the coordinates of a single player's ceiling. More than 60 years later, no one has scored more than 81, Kobe Bryant's 2006 total the closest anyone has come. It's also a product of its era — the league's average team score in 1961-62 was 118.8, and Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points and 48.5 minutes that season. The fact that a night with no surviving footage became this sport's most famous number says something about how basketball is remembered through statistics.