Sweet Revenge

When Wilt Chamberlain was with the San Francisco Warriors, local sportswriters tended to regard him as an oversized goon who could dunk the ball but rated zero on team play. WILT SCORES 50, WARRIORS LOSE, the headlines often read. The crowds were down on him, too. "I can't love a 7-ft. 1-in. loser," said a fan at the time. So two years ago, San Francisco gladly traded Wilt to the Philadelphia 76ers. Last year the Warriors fired Wilt's coach, Alex Hannum, after a front-office squabble, and he also wound up in Philadelphia. Good riddance? Undeniably--for Chamberlain and Hannum.

Last week the two old Warriors led the 76ers against San Francisco in the finals of the National Basketball Association championships. And revenge, ah, it was sweet. Not that it was easy. The 76ers won the first two games of the best-of-seven series, but the Warriors' big gun now is Rick Barry, 23. Scoring 55 points in one game, 43 in another, Barry carried the Warriors to two victories in the next three games, and returned home trailing by only three games to two.

Yet there, in the sixth game, it ended. The Wilt Chamberlain of the 1966-67 season is a complete ballplayer--no longer concentrating on scores for the record book, instead setting up plays for teammates, scrambling downcourt to fight for rebounds and break up Warrior attack patterns. In the first five games, Wilt had scored only 82 points, but he had contributed 37 assists and picked off 148 rebounds. In the final game, he scored 24, with four assists and 23 rebounds. At the very last, his defensive play was the difference. Behind by only a point with 15 seconds to go, the Warriors still might have won if Barry had been able to see anything but Wilt looming between him and the backboard. Barry's hopeless shot sailed far off target, and the 76ers picked up another two points on a foul. Final score: Philadelphia 125, San Francisco 122, thus giving the 76ers their first championship and ending Wilt's eight-year frustration over the fact that he had never been on a title-winning team.

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