YouTube Gold: Jayhawk Wilt Chamberlain In Color

We’ve talked periodically about what an insane athlete Wilt Chamberlain was: he was 7-1, more or less, had sprinter’s speed and a 50” vertical.

Some of the NBA footage is in color, but most of the early video (actually film) was in black and white.

That makes this particular clip really interesting, because it’s of Chamberlain’s time at Kansas and it’s in color.

This is a fairly brief clip of Chamberlain running the fast break and dunking during the NCAA tournament. You can see how well he runs the court, partly because in this game, he doesn't have to run very hard to keep up with the other guys. He’s just kind of strolling along.

If you read or watch things about Chamberlain, his contemporaries said that, despite his immense power, he was basically a finesse player and, on a human level, he was loathe to hurt people. So while a lot of people today would have made the dunk at the end of this break a statement, Chamberlain wasn’t like that. He just put it in rather gently (though there are a lot of stories about Chamberlain getting angry and...well...you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry).

It’s also a bit unusual by today’s standards because Kansas is wearing red unis.