The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- October 25, 1999

History laced with nostalgia

Rich Clarkson remembers the early days with Wilt Chamberlain

Editor's Note: The careers of basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain and sports photography legend Rich Clarkson intersected in Lawrence, Kansas, in the 1950s. Here are Clarkson's recollections of Chamberlain, who died October 12:

BY RICH CLARKSON
DIRECTOR OF NCAA PHOTOS

When Wilt Chamberlain arrived in Lawrence to begin his collegiate basketball career, I had just graduated from the University of Kansas and was putting together the start of my photojournalistic career. It was at this time the most prestigious of sports publications had just arrived on the scene: Sports Illustrated.

I took the occasion when preseason picture day arrived to photograph the 7-foot Wilt from every angle -- jumping, dunking, rebounding and just standing under the basket. This was to be my introduction to SI.

But as I was finishing photographing Wilt (who was very patient with me), it seemed that nothing I was doing made him look as tall and imposing as he was in real life. My last-minute idea was to pose him seated, tying his shoes. Wilt's waist was unusually high and his legs very long. When he sat in the folding chair I brought onto the court, I finally made him look tall in a picture.

I packaged up a set of prints and dropped them into the mail to Sports Illustrated. This was a fairly naive move by me since the big-time, Time, Inc., magazine dispatched photographers all over the world and rarely took anything "over the transom."

But as luck would have it, my package arrived on the desk of picture editor Jerry Astor on the very morning that managing editor Andre Laguerre had decided to do a Chamberlain story. Instead of sending a photographer from New York to Lawrence, they used my picture.

I was in heaven (and once again when the check arrived). But my Chamberlain luck was to strike again three months later when Astor called to give me an assignment to photograph the Kansas-Iowa State game in Lawrence.

This was my first big-time magazine assignment. Jerry Tax, then the basketball writer, came to Lawrence and together we worked on the game story that was to be a smaller story -- a column at the back of the book. But just before tipoff, Jerry came up to me at courtside saying, "Take lots of pictures." That was an instruction not really needed. But then he told me the why: The golf tournament in California was rained out and our story was the lead that week.

Thus, my first assignment for SI ran eight pages and an action picture of Wilt from that take won many of the prizes for the best sports picture of the year.

During the three years Wilt was at Kansas and in the years following, we visited many times. It always amazed me that many sportswriters found Chamberlain difficult or aloof because he was always approachable to me and many others. In later years, he was always helping others with such endeavors as creating a volleyball league or an amateur track team -- all to give promising athletes a chance. I know he helped many individuals with money and contacts and did it quietly and without fanfare.

You never knew when you were going to run into him. Once when I was walking through one of the terminals of the Los Angeles airport, I heard someone yelling at me, "Hey, Jayhawker!" I turned around and there was Chamberlain -- with everyone in the terminal watching him.

He was always watched and unlike some superstar athletes, he would often stop to visit with fans and sign autographs.

His three years in Lawrence (one playing on the freshman team and two on the varsity) were difficult for him for a number of reasons. He was frustrated on the court by the sinking defense that most teams threw at him, often with four men around him. He also struggled with being a black Philadelphian in relatively tiny Lawrence, Kansas, but he made many friends -- including Bob Billings, his traveling roommate who became a business and financial advisor in the later years.

Certainly one of his most frustrating times was the triple-overtime loss to North Carolina in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship in 1957 -- a championship most fans, the press and many coaches acceded to Kansas when high-schooler Wilt announced his selection of colleges. At that time, he was probably the most-recruited high-school player in history.

On the day the announcement was made, coach Forrest C. "Phog" Allen uttered one of his more memorable lines. When told of Chamberlain's decision to attend Kansas, Allen said, "That's wonderful. I hope he comes out for basketball."

When I would see Wilt, he would often take credit for all my years photographing for Sports Illustrated. And, indeed, last year when SI selected the 10 most memorable portraits from the first 40 years, there was Chamberlain, sitting down and tying his Kansas shoes.