The first time we played each other, around 1960-61, I think he must have got close to 30 points, 20-something rebounds. I think I might have outrebounded him, but he outscored me. But we won the game, which was the important element. We had three more games that week, and I did not make a contribution to my team. It wore me out so I had to make a decision that I couldn’t throw myself into it so, battling Wilt so much that I couldn’t funtion the rest of the time. Not only was it draining, but it’s a team game, and if I tried to match him statistically, I would not be doing for my team what I normally do. Basically, I’d be trying to play like him. I had to discipline myself to play the way I’d been playing to help my team win. That was a unique, scary situation. Here was a guy 7-3 or 7-2, whatever he wanted to admit to, 275 to 280, his playing weight, who could outrun 95 percent of the guys in the league in a straight race. He was fast!
And he could jump up and touch the top of the backboard, and the last little thing was, he was smart. So you couldn’t play him the same way every night. If you did he’d just embarrass you. So what I did realize early in the thing, after watching him, was if you tried to play him vertically, you were in the wrong arena. But I had much better lateral movement than he did, so what I wanted to do was try to make him play laterally or horizontally as much as possible. If I could do that, then we could win the game.
