Today in sports history

Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, then then NBA's all-time leading scorer, put in his 25,000th point on this date 40 years ago, while playing for the Philadelphia 76ers, in a game against the Detroit Pistons. That was his 691st career game, which is still the record for fewest games to get to 25,000 points. Michael Jordan is second, with 782.

Wilt is known for many eye-popping accomplishments on the basketball court. Among the NBA records he still holds (and this is an extremely incomplete list):

• He scored 100 points in a game; second on that list is Kobe Bryant, with 81.
• He averaged 50.4 points a game in 1961-62; he also has the second- and third-highest single-season averages, and the highest average by a player not named Wilt is 38.3, by Elgin Baylor.
• He scored at least 60 points in a game 32 times; Jordan is second on that list with four.
• He scored 53 points in a playoff game as a rookie, which is a playoff rookie record -- and in that same game, he pulled down 35 rebounds.
• He averaged 22.9 rebounds a game for his career. His contemporary Bill Russell is second on that list with 22.5, but there's a huge drop-off after that to No. 3 Bob Pettit, with 16.2.
• He averaged 27.2 rebounds a game in 1960-61; he recorded all of the top three rebounding seasons in NBA history, and you have to go all the way to No. 19 to find a player other than Chamberlain or Russell. That player is Nate Thurmond, if you're wondering, with 22.0 in 1967-68; so the highest per-game single-season rebounding average in NBA history by someone not named Chamberlain or Russell is lower than both of their career averages.
  
• He grabbed 55 rebounds in a game.
• He had nine consecutive triple-doubles in March 1968.
• He is the only player in NBA history to record a double-triple-double. In a game against the Pistons on February 2, 1968, he logged 22 points, 25 rebounds and 21 assists.
• He had more than 40 points and 40 rebounds in the same game four times. In one of those games, he scored 78 points (then the NBA record, before he broke it himself) and got 43 rebounds.
  

Perhaps just as impressive: Wilt never fouled out of an NBA game.

Despite all those feats, Wilt only won two NBA titles: 1967 with the Sixers, and 1972 with the Lakers, being named the Finals MVP for the latter. But he was certainly one of the four or five greatest players of all time, and his jersey number has been retired by five teams: The University of Kansas, the Harlem Globetrotters, and the 76ers, Warriors and Lakers of the NBA.

Chamberlain is also known for a rather fanciful claim regarding his off-the-court activity, involving some 20,000 women. I have a hard time believing that, but at least he never cheated on his wife, because he never married. He died in 1999, at age 63.