Wilt Chamberlain is one of the most dominant players in NBA history, having broken and set records constantly, becoming a force to be reckoned with wherever he went, leaving a huge mark on the NBA with his incredible performances. On and off the court, Wilt used to make a lot of noise, creating a legend that lasts until today.
Outside of his incredible numbers, Chamberlain was a player when he wasn’t dribbling the basketball, and he had a way with women that’s become a big part of his legendary life. Rumors around the league had that Wilt had slept with 20,000 women, which is an incredible number.
It’s even bigger than scoring 100 points in a single NBA game, but we all know that Wilt always wanted to go big no matter what he did. He also talked about this in his book, saying that he never wanted to brag about that, but he just wanted to ‘lay it out’ to people. In his 1991 biography, A View From Above, Wilt Chamberlain explained:
“I’m not boasting… I don’t see all this lovemaking as any kind of conquest,” Chamberlain wrote.
“All I’m saying is that I like women, people are curious about my sex life, and to most people, the number of women who have come and gone through my bedrooms – and various hotel rooms around the country – would boggle the mind.”
He attended an interview with Conan O’Brien, where he touched on this too, explaining why he used the number 20,000 and what it meant for him to sleep with all these women. Chamberlain said he didn’t want to objectify the ladies but made it clear he believed in short romance as long as people were happy (1:25).
“The number was to make a statement about something, and it was not ever to sort of like belittle the ladies that I’ve known and make them just another number. In my book, they were a number, really a great looking number, but what I was trying to say in my book: there’s nothing wrong with short romance. As long as it’s a happy thing you have going on. But the idea was to say sexually rules the world, and for men to think that having 1,000 different women is really cool, I have found out that having one woman 1,000 times is what’s really happening.”
If he made those types of statements today, Wilt would have been canceled, but he comes from a different era than us, and as he said, if things were happy, there was nothing to be mad about. He always showed respect to these ladies and never tried to say something bad about them, acting and talking like the gentleman he was. Still, many people get shocked by that number, and regardless of if it’s true or not, many just decide to believe, and that’s it.
