Wilt Chamberlain used a fake name to dominate pro basketball at 16
Some internet sleuthing has revealed that Wilt Chamberlain may have dunked all over professional basketball at the young age of 16.
The power of the Internet will never cease to amaze me. Reddit user dantheman9758 has done some deep research into the early basketball career of NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain and has discovered that he was playing professionally under the alias “George Marcus” at the age of 16. Not only was Chamberlain playing with grown men, he was utterly destroying them.
Using the Marcus alias, Chamberlain played for the Pittsburgh Raiders and scored as many as 44 points in a single game. The very next year, he was playing for the Quakertown Fays and was even more dominant. Chamberlain averaged nearly 54 points per game. In the playoffs, he averaged 74 points a game.
There were spotty rules about where high schoolers could play in the 1950s, but because Chamberlain was from the City of Philadelphia, he was not as strictly governed by the Pennsylvania Athletic Association. Still, there were investigations into his amateur status before he began his career at the University of Kansas in 1955. Somehow his association with the Fays slipped past the NCAA even though they were fairly brazen in using Chamberlain’s real name in the box score.
Wilt Chamberlain aka "George Marcus" secretly dominated professional basketball at age 16 under a false identity. 40.5ppg. Seriously. pic.twitter.com/LdgtmpghJp
— Chamberlain Archive (@WiltCArchive) May 20, 2017
What a time the 1950s must have been to be alive! Imagine a seven-foot high schooler in today’s day and age trying to hide his professional career by moving across the state and using an incredibly generic name. People in Pittsburgh had probably never even heard of a high-school phenom from the other side of Pennsylvania. Without the internet, you could basically be whoever you wanted with no fear of being found out. And — if anyone tries to call you out for scoring 74 points per game as a high schooler in a professional league, just deny, deny, deny.
@TylerIAm @ColeyMick @barstoolsports @MickstapeShow Rare photograph of George Marcus. Pretty clearly not Wilt. Case closed. pic.twitter.com/Ru3mLibNpI
— Nick Trig (@TrigDraws) May 23, 2017
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This fun anecdote only serves to build on the legend of The Big Dipper. It is great fun to picture Chamberlain hatching a plan with his boys to launch a professional career under a terrible alias, dunk all over grown men, and still get home in time to finish his homework.