FAMOUS DAILY IMPROVISERS: Wilt Chamberlain

A good case can be made for considering Wilt Chamberlain the greatest basketball player of all time. Naturally, Wilt’s height (7 feet, 1 inch) provided him a distinct advantage (as is often said in basketball, “You can’t teach height”), but then again there were plenty of other seven-footers before and after Wilt who couldn’t match his agility, durability, and finesse. Of the five main categories used to evaluate basketball players, Wilt was a powerhouse in three – scoring, rebounding, and playing defense.

And yet, in one of the remaining two categories – free-throw shooting – Wilt was one of the worst of all time. His 51.1% lifetime free-throw percentage ranks among the poorest in NBA history.

Yet Wilt seemed to intuitively recognize the Strengths-Based Development concept early on, making two basic decisions about his career:

1) To accept his free-throw shooting deficiencies and instead leverage his superlative skills in his three strengths areas;

2) To focus his development efforts on the fifth category – ballhandling – where he did possess raw but unrefined talent.

As a member of the Harlem Globetrotters in the late 50s, Wilt played in the backcourt, bringing the ball upcourt on the dribble to sharpen his ballhandling skills. Later, as a member of the 1967-68 Philadelphia 76ers – one of the greatest basketball teams of all time – Wilt achieved something no other center has ever accomplished by leading the league in assists.

Wilt Chamberlain holds 72 NBA records, including the legendary night in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in which he scored 100 points in a single game. Would you call Wilt an “incomplete” player because of his free-throw weaknesses?

I know – sounds ludicrous to me too.