Imagine watching a basketball game and seeing one player score 20 points. Impressive. Then 30. Incredible. Then 50 points in a single game.

Now imagine that same player continuing to score until he reaches 100 points.

It sounds impossible. But on March 2, 1962, it happened.

That night, Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors stepped onto the court against the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pennsylvania. By the end of the game, he had achieved something no other player in NBA history has ever matched: 100 points in a single game. The Warriors won 169–147, but the final score became almost secondary to what Chamberlain had accomplished.

The numbers behind the performance are just as remarkable as the record itself. Chamberlain scored 23 points in the first quarter and had already reached 41 by halftime. He added 28 points in the third quarter, and then scored another 31 in the final period.

He finished the game shooting 36 of 63 from the field and an astonishing 28 of 32 from the free-throw line. He also collected 25 rebounds and played all 48 minutes of the game.

What makes the free throws especially incredible is that Chamberlain was not known as an elite free-throw shooter. Throughout his career, he converted just over half of his attempts from the line. But on that particular night, almost everything seemed to go right.

As Chamberlain approached the historic number, the atmosphere inside the arena changed. Fans realized they were witnessing something that had never happened before. They began chanting for his teammates to give him the ball. The Warriors did exactly that.

With less than a minute remaining, Chamberlain scored again.

100 points.

Fans rushed onto the court, and the game was briefly interrupted by the excitement. Shortly afterward, a simple piece of paper with the number “100” written on it was handed to Chamberlain for a photograph. That image would become one of the most iconic photographs in basketball history.

More than six decades later, the record still stands.

Many of basketball's greatest players have produced extraordinary scoring performances, but nobody has reached Chamberlain's century mark. His closest famous challenger was Kobe Bryant, who scored 81 points in a game in 2006—an incredible performance in its own right, but still 19 points short of the record.

Some records are broken. Others survive for generations.

Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game remains one of the greatest individual performances not only in NBA history, but in the history of sports itself.

One player. One game. One hundred points.

Some nights become history.

Go beyond. Discover. Knowledge is preparation.