Category: Sports

The trolleys stopped running at midnight, so Tom Hoover waited outside the Philadelphia Warriors locker room for a lift back to Villanova. He was a teenage college student and his ride after sitting in the stands at Convention Hall was the passenger seat of Wilt Chamberlain’s purple Cadillac El Dorado.

A 40-minute drive, Hoover said, became a 10-minute sprint as Chamberlain burned rubber before dropping his buddy off at the dorm.

“Dippy had a heavy foot,” Hoover said. “Back then, you didn’t pay attention. You were just talking and riding. But you would be like ‘Damn, how’d we get here so fast?’ It was one of those kinds of things.”

Chamberlain then jumped on the turnpike and headed for New York, as he lived in the 1960s in an apartment overlooking Central Park while playing in Philadelphia.

He maintained a residence in Philly but spent most nights in New York, from which he’d commute for games and practices while owning a popular club in Harlem. Chamberlain even hitched a ride from Hershey back to New York in 1962 with Knicks players after his 100-point game.

“He would do 90 to 100 [mph] all the way up the turnpike,” Hoover said of Chamberlain, who died in 1999. “And if he got stopped. ‘Oh, it’s Wilt Chamberlain. Can I get your autograph?’ Back then it was a different time. It was really different.”

Chamberlain’s commute could be copied this season as several NBA insiders reported last month about the possibility of LeBron James living in New York while playing for the Sixers. James, one report suggested, could use a helicopter to get to games and practices. Not even Chamberlain’s heavy foot could keep pace with that.

“I was thinking LeBron might do the same thing,” said Hoover, who played for the Knicks after leaving Villanova and now lives in Manhattan. “Philly is not his kind of town. And that’s not a knock against Philadelphia. But I just think he’s a New York City kind of guy after living in L.A. That kind of lifestyle. So I can see him living in New York and making that trip back and forth.”

A New York ‘magnet’

Chamberlain purchased Smalls Paradise in 1959, spent $200,000 to renovate the club on Seventh Avenue and 135th Street, and renamed it Big Wilt’s Smalls Paradise. It became the spot.

“Oh, that was jumping, man. You kidding me?” Hoover said. “That was just a wonderful time in my life and a wonderful time to be growing up as 20-some years old, living in New York, and hanging in that place.”

Chamberlain told Ebony magazine that he spent 18 hours a day at Smalls to learn everything about owning a bar. Sammy Davis Jr. played Smalls, as did King Curtis, Jerry Butler, The Coasters, and Willis “Gator” Jackson. James Brown would perform at the Apollo Theater and then stop by Smalls.

“Dip was a magnet for everyone,” Hoover said. “People just wanted to be around him. They would come in there and just look at him. They had never seen a guy who could dress like that and looked like that. He was a 7-foot athlete who wasn’t gangly and uncoordinated. Plus, that big diamond he wore on his finger. They never saw anything like that.”

The club was a hub for Black entertainers, drawing “everybody who was anybody.”

“My mother always tells the story that she met Sidney Poitier at the club,” said Gloria Miller, whose father, Vince, was Chamberlain’s childhood best friend and often drove with him back to Philly.

Chamberlain’s Manhattan apartment was on the top floor of Park West Village, then a ritzy high-rise near Central Park. The apartment had a terrace and windows that overlooked the park with a view downtown of the Empire State Building.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — who hung there as a high schooler still named Lew Alcindor — described the apartment as “the ultimate bachelor pad.”

“A two-bedroom place done up in antique gold finish with a big couch in the living room, paintings on the walls, good stereo, great record collection,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote in his autobiography Giant Steps. “Wilt was known for his expensive taste, and the place showed it. I walked in and I clammed right up tight. I didn’t know what cool was, but I knew very strongly that I didn’t want to be uncool.”

Abdul-Jabbar played “Dirty Hearts” at Chamberlain’s dining room table with Chamberlain, Hoover, and Cal Ramsey. Chamberlain’s crew used to close Smalls at 4 a.m. and then play cards at the apartment. Abdul-Jabbar called them “hearts junkies.”

They ate sandwiches and swapped stories: What did Bill Russell say? What was Elgin Baylor complaining about? What’s up with Oscar Robertson? The loser of the card game had to chug a quart of water.

“But he would never drink,” Hoover said. “So it was like a wrestling match with that big guy.”

Living in Elkins Park

The Sixers traded for Chamberlain in February 1965, bringing him back to Philadelphia after the Warriors had moved three years earlier to San Francisco. There were a few weeks left in the regular season, and Sixers owner Ike Richman didn’t want Chamberlain spending nights in New York.

“He had a driver who he used to pay to take him up to New York,” said Richman’s son, David. “My father used to pay him under the table to not drive him to New York.”

Richman instructed Chamberlain to live at his home in Elkins Park for the rest of the season.

“I came home from Cheltenham High School and my mother, with our domestic helper, was putting my twin beds together and doing all this stuff to my room,” Michael Richman said. “I said, ‘What are you doing?’ She said, ‘Wilt’s moving in. Daddy’s making him.’”

Chamberlain shot baskets in Richman’s driveway, hung out with the kids, and ate dinner with the family. Richman and Chamberlain usually drove together to Convention Hall, but once Richman had to be there early for a playoff game against Cincinnati. So he asked David — who had just earned his driver’s license — to drive Chamberlain.

The 16-year-old usually drove a 1959 Austin-Healey Sprite, but that wouldn’t be big enough for Chamberlain. Neither would the Pontiac Tempest. So the teenager drove his dad’s Cadillac.

“He used to sit in the back seat of the car and hang his body over the front seat,” Richman said. “It was like having a cobra in the car. He was in the back, but his head and body was in the front seat.”

The season ended that April when the Sixers lost to Boston in seven games. Chamberlain shared an apartment the next season with Miller on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway but spent most of his time in New York. He often commuted by train or driving to Philly with Miller in a powder blue Bentley that was delivered to his Manhattan apartment.

The press ripped Chamberlain every time he missed a practice and chided him for living in another city. He once shoved a reporter into a locker after the writer kept asking him after a playoff defeat — in which Chamberlain scored 46 points — if he would have made more free throws had he not missed practice that week.

“He wasn’t kidding when he played. He really meant it,” said Richman. “Whether he was going up to New York to party or whatever, when it came to game time, he was never half-hearted about it. He was really into it. When it was time to play ball, this wasn’t a game to him. It was a war.”

Family in Philly

Chamberlain drove after each season to Los Angeles, where he had built a beautiful house off Mulholland Drive in Bel Air.

“He used to jump in his Bentley and drive for three days straight without stopping,” Richman said. “He didn’t need to sleep. Then he would get there. He was basically an insomniac.”

The powder blue Bentley was there in the 1970s when the Millers — who lived in South Jersey — visited Chamberlain.

“He called my father ‘Miller’ so he would call me ‘Little Miller’,” said Miller, whose father worked as a scout for the Sixers. “My mom was going to make dinner so we had to go to the store. He said, ‘Come on, Little Miller. Come to the store with me.’ I was getting my shoes on and he had no patience. He said, ‘You don’t need shoes. Come on.’ We got in the Bentley and we’re riding down the freeway and I’m like, ‘Why are they all looking at us?’ I didn’t realize I’m in a beautiful Bentley with Wilt Chamberlain. But it fit him.”

Chamberlain retired in 1973 and spent most of his time in L.A. but still kept close ties to Philly. He was the best man in Miller’s wedding and became Gloria Miller’s godfather. The basketball icon kept a tight circle of friends from his childhood. Chamberlain, just like when he lived in New York, was always close to Philadelphia.

“He was family,” Miller said. “He never forgot where he came from. Whenever Wilt came to town, he would come to my parents’ house and my mother would make him fried chicken and cobbler. Wilt and I would pick up the cobbler pieces together. It was just home. It was family.”

Hoover said he never thought much about Chamberlain living in New York while playing in Philly. The 7-footer belonged in the big city. And Hoover wouldn’t blame James for thinking the same.

Hoover met Chamberlain when he was playing a summer game in New York — “Wilt Chamberlain knows my name,” Hoover thought after Chamberlain watched him play — and they soon became friends. Chamberlain dropped him off at his dorm and sped to New York. Hoover said no one even noticed the basketball superstar dropping off the college kid. It was normal.

“Nobody saw me. It wasn’t necessary,” Hoover said. “The key to having relationships with guys is just having relationships. Not taking pictures, getting autographs, and jumping out saying, ‘Look who I’m with.’ That kind of thing makes you have lasting relationships with guys. If you’re always in front and always going to be out front with them, then that relationship is not going to last at all.”