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Philippine Showbiz Today
October 22 - November 7 , 2017
On October 13 , 1982 , the International Olympic Committee posthumously restored the pair of god medals won by American athlete Jim Thorpe in pentathlon and decathlon events in the 1912 Olympic Games at Stockholm , Sweden .
The two gold medals were stripped off Thorpe , the first native American athlete , when it was found that he had played semipro minor league baseball in North Carolina in 1909 and 1910 violation of the strict rule on amateurism at that time .
The Thorpe family petitioned to have the medals returned after Thorpe ’ s death in 1953 but IOC president Avery Brundage , who Thorpe beat in those two events , dismissed it , making the Olympic “ Iron Man ” suffer a double whammy brought about by misplaced idealism and politics .
Then IOC has , for years , opened competitions to several sports like basketball , football , tennis , baseball , to mention few . Why , they ’ re even thinking of opening , too , the competition to
Basketball
He dominated his sport in the way few have in the long history of game men play . God made Wilt Chamberlain 7-feet and 1-inch tall and weighed 275 pounds . He took care of the rest .
NBA legend Oscar Robertson was once whether Chamberlain was the best ever . The answer was : “ The books don ’ t lie .”
The record books , indeed , are full of Chamberlain ’ s accomplishments . He was the only NBA player to score 4,000 points in a season . He set NBA single-game records for most points ( 100 ), most consecutive field goals ( 18 ) and most rebounds ( 55 ). Perhaps his most mind-boggling stat was the 50.4 points per game he averaged during the 1961-62 season . And if it wasn ’ t , then perhaps the 48.5 minutes per game he averaged that same year .
Wilt with an all-time career points 31,419 , which was later surpassed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , Karl Malone and Michael Jordan . He is tops in rebounds with 23,924 . He led the NBA in scoring seven years in a row . He was the league ’ s top rebounder in 11 of his 14 seasons . And as if to prove that he was not a selfish player , he had the NBA ’ s highest assist total in 1967-68 .
Wilton Norman Chamberlain was born on August 21 , 1936 in Philadelphia . Spent his high school days playing for Overbrook High that city and college
Jim Thorpe professional boxing . The restoration of the two gold medals Thorpe stashed away after strutting wares in 17 track and field events , 10 in decathlon and five in pentathlon , came 70 years after winning them and almost three decades following his demise .
James Francis Thorpe is acknowledged one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports , likewise , played American football in collegiate and professional , leagues , professional baseball , and basketball .
Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation in Oklahoma , and attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School , where he was a two-time All-American for the school ’ s football team . After his Olympic success in 1912 , which included a record score in the decathlon , he added a victory in the All-Around Championship of the Amateur Athletic Union .
In 1913 , Thorpe signed with the New York Giants , and he played six seasons in Major League Baseball between 1913 and 1919 . Thorpe joined the Canton Bulldogs American football team in 1915 , helping them win three professional championships .
He also played for six team in the National Football League ( NFL ). He played as part of several all-American Indian teams throughout his career , and barnstormed as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of American Indians .
From 1920 to 1921 , Thorpe was nominally the first president of the American Professional Football Association ( APFA ), the forerunner of today ’ s NFL . He sa action in professional sports until age 41 , the end of his sports career coinciding with the start of the Great Depression .
13 Wilt Chamberlain at Kansas University .
He died on October 12 , 1999 , with this year as the 18th anniversary of his demise .
Was elected to Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978 ; NBA champion in 1967 , ‘ 72 ; NBA Finals MVP ( 1972 ); NBA MVP ( 1960 , ‘ 66 , ‘ 67 , ‘ 68 ); All-NBA First Team ( 1960 , ‘ 61 , ‘ 62 , ‘ 64 , ‘ 66 , ‘ 67 , ‘ 68 ); Second Team (‘ 63 , ‘ 65 , ‘ 72 ); All-Defensive First Team ( 1972 , ‘ 73 ); Rookie of Year ( 1960 ); One of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History ( 1996 ).
He was acknowledged as basketball ’ s unstoppable force , the most awesome offensive force the game has ever seen . Asked to name the greatest players ever to play basketball , most fans and aficionados would put Wilt Chamberlain at or near the top of the list .
Wilt Chamberlain as a Laker won 33 straight games and the NBA title in 1971-72 . He dominated the game as few players in any sport ever have . Chamberlain seemed capable of scoring and rebounding at will , despite the double and triple-teams and constant fouling tactics that opposing teams used to try to shut him down .
The most shining figures are his scoring records ; most games with 50 plus points , 118 ; most consecutive games with 40 plus points , 14 ; most consecutive games with 30 plus points : 65 ; most consecutive games with 20 points and more , 126 ; highest rookie scoring average : 37.6 ppg ; highest field goal percentage in a season : . 727 . In almost all of these , the players who emerged second place found themselves far behind .
Wilt ’ s dominance led to many rules changes , including widening the lane , instituting offensive goal-tending and revising rules governing inbounding the ball and shooting free throws . Chamberlain would leap with the ball from behind the foul line to deposit the ball in the basket .
No other player in NBA history has spawned so many myths nor created such an impact . It ’ s difficult to imagine now , with the seemingly continuing surge of bigger skilled players , the effect of playing against Chamberlain , who
SPORTS
Thorpe struggled to earn a living after that , working several odd jobs . He suffered from alcoholism , and lived his last years in failing health and poverty . He was married three times and had eight children , before suffering from heart failure and dying in March 1953 .
He received various accolades for his athletic accomplishments . The Associated Press named him the “ greatest athlete ” from the first 50 years of the 20th century , and the Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted him as part of its inaugural class in 1963 .
A Pennsylvania town was named in his honor and a monument site there is the site of his remains . Thorpe was portrayed in the 1951 film Jim Thorpe – All- American , and appeared in several films himself .
It ’ s been even decades since Jim Thorpe dashed through the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm , and we ’ re still chasing him . Greatest-evers are always hard to quantify , but Thorpe is especially so , a laconic , evasive passerby , a vkctim of defies Olympic idealism . ●
was not only taller and stronger than almost anyone he matched up against but remarkably coordinated as well .
A track and field star in high school and college , he stood 7-1 and weighed 275 pounds , though he added more muscle as his career progressed and eventually played at over 300 pounds .
Chamberlain was one of the few players of his day who had the sheer strength to block a dunk . It was also during this time that one of his nicknames , “ the Stilt ” and “ Goliath ” in reference to his height . Other nicknames iven him were “ Dippy ” and “ Dipper ,” along with the later variant , “ Big Dipper .” The story goes that Chamberlain ’ s buddies seeing him dip his head as his walked through doorways tagged him with the nickname and it stuck .
With Chamberlain faced the Boston Celtics in the 1960 NBA Playoffs , which saw the first postseason confrontation between Chamberlain and defensive standout Bill Russell , a matchup that would grow into the greatest individual rivalry in the NBA and possibly any sport .
During the next decade , the pair would square off in the playoffs eight times . Chamberlain came away the victor only once . In that initial confrontation , Chamberlain outscored Russell by 81 points , but the Celtics took the series , four games to two . ●