I'm not going to pretend that I know exactly what happened with the Warriors that year.
I know voting is complete, but I thought I would address this some by referencing a book I just read on this time in the league.
I was thinking I would transcribe the section of The Rivalry on this season for you guys cause its not available on Google Books, but it's just way too long. The gist of the story:
Wilt stayed in great shape in the offseason. Working out, playing with the Globetrotters, etc. He started getting stomach pains when he came back to NY, tried to get his diet right (cut out hot dogs, which he apparently loved lol), but nothing. Before an exhibition game, the team Dr told him he needed to come to the hospital because of an irregularity on his EKG, and that the stomach pains might be related. He spent 3 weeks bed-ridden in the St. Mary's hospital, the doctors unable to figure out his condition.
Frustrated, he calls his Dr Stanley Lorber, who'd treated him before, and Lorber says its common for black athletes to have irregularities on their EKG and that Lorber had found the same issue in the past, its not big deal, white doctors had trouble with it. Wilt checks out of the hospital and flies to Philly to see him. Transcribed from the book about the impromptu press conference upon his departure from the hospital:
The team physician admitted that he and the other doctors had been unable to find any signs of a tumor, ulcer, or gallbladder problem that might explain Chamberlain's stomach pains. "It's a little strange," he said.
Chamberlain, who had lost weight, was weak, irritable, and depressed, with no sign of the humor he had shown when he'd first entered the hospital.
"How long will it take you to get into shape once you've been given permission to play?" a reporter asked.
"I have no idea," he said.
Goes on to say both Hannum and Mieuli were legitimately concerned about Chamberlain, for all his fauls he'd never shown signs of malingering before, especially considering the punishment he'd take in games. Hannum moved Thurmond back to C (where he played in college) from F to adjust during the preseason. Wilt gets diagnosed with pancreatitis in Philly, gets put on some meds and cleared to play. Again, The Rivalry:
Even before leaving the hospital, Chamberlain started working out, but he flew back to San Francisco in a terrible mood. After his four-week stay in two different hospitals, he was thirty-five pounds underweight and his muscle tone had deteriorated. He had missed training camp and the exhibition games, and he felt weak. He was irritated at the San Francisco doctors who had failed to diagnose his condition, and he was irritated at the Warriors management for failing to find a doctor who could make the diagnosis.
Mieuli makes a gesture to Wilt to make up for it, got him a diamond stickpin (something Wilt had suggested in lieu of rings for a championship), but Wilt, pissed, told him essentially to shove it. At this point, basically Hannum and Mieuli agree that Wilt and the Warriors are done. He's not into doing the publicity things they need to do to make money, they don't like him for it, he blames them for his extended hospitalization...they just don't get along.
They start the season without him:
In addition to Chamberlain, a number of the other Warriors were ill or injured. Tom Meschery had a broken hand and a sore ankle. Gary Phillips was recovering from an ankle operation. Guy Rogers came down with the flu. Al Attles had been playing with an excruciating charley horse. "At times," Stu Herman wrote in the Chronicle, "the Warriors look like out-clinic patients at St. Mary's Hospital."
Wilt comes back probably too early cause they're losing. Only scores 16 in his first game, only able to play 33 minutes, legs look shaky. Still plays the full 48 the next game, drops 37, and seems to get into shape fairly quickly, drops 50+ 6 times in his first 6 weeks back. Still, the Warriors don't win; they're out of sorts in large part because they'd been playing with the defensive-minded, offensively-limited Thurmond at C for almost 2 months at this point. The chemistry is all off. Then, there's this (referenced in the 63-64 thread):
Another troublesome fact was that the other teams had responded to Hannum's slow-paced offense by speeding up their own game. What worked against San Francisco, opposing coaches had discovered, was the fast break. The Warriors, with their injuries, and their ragged defense, and their unrehearsed offense, could neither counter nor contain it.
Also, San Fran seemed to win on the road with ease: they'd sell out crowds of people who came to boo and heckle Wilt ("nobody roots for Goliath"), but in San Fran, the stands were empty, the raucous road crowd firing up San Fran and the empty seats at home depressing them. Bizarrely, at one point in the season, they were undefeated on the road and winless at home. Then, Dec 4, after SF opens up a 30-point lead on Boston, Red sends in the reserves, and a rookie John Thompson elbows Wilt in the face and shatters his nose. He misses time and then has to play in a mask, as does Hightower with a similar injury that happened in the same week.
Why was Wilt traded for pennies on the dollar talent-wise?
The fact of the matter was that, less than three months into the season, Mieuli had become desperate to get rid of Chamberlain. His main concern was money. Chamberlain was making $85,000 a year, an astronomical sum at the time. When the team had drawn big crowds during its run at the championship the previous year, the additional revenue Chamberlain had been able to generate for the club had more than offset the cost of paying for hiim to play. But now, with the team in last place, attendance had slumped down below even what it had been during the team's first year in San Francisco. Some nights barely a thousand people bothered to show up, giving the Warriors the worst attendance in the league. As a result, almost one-third of the team's gate revenue was going to pay Chamberlain's salary. Chamberlain was a big draw on the road, but the NBA stipulated that all the gate revenue went to the home team, so Mieuli got nothing from his star player's out-of-town appeal
Minority owners were antsy, wanted to move the team to Oakland. Mieuli thought he could move Chamberlain to lower over-head and survive until the team built up a reliable fan base (he had weathered a similar storm with his 49ers football team). Some owners were skeptical of acquiring him, but others thought if you were smart you could probably generate an extra ~300,000 at the home gate from his presence. Knicks, Sixers, Hawks, and Lakers were all in serious talks.
With the team losing, and trade rumors very public, the team basically fell apart. The wheels came off. Player became convinced within a month they'd be playing on basically a different team. Wilt made matters worse; when he stopped trying, that meant shooting a lot, not getting anyone else involved, which only compounded the problem. They go into a tailspin. Nate Thurmond, tired of playing forward, demands a trade. Last quote and then I'll leave it at that:
As teh all-star game and mid-season break approached, Hannum felt the Warriors had 3 options. One was to stand pat, keeping both Chamberlain and Thurmond, but that made no sense with so much money going out and so little coming in. Either Chamberlain or Thurmond should go. The question was whether the Warriors should trade Thurmond for a top-notch shooter and hope that once the team's injuries healed, they could recover their fire and bring home a championship this year, jump-starting ticket sales for the following year. Otherwise, the Warriors could accept the fact that Chamberlain was simply not drawing a large enough gate to justify his salary, trade him, and rebuild the team around Thurmond, who was earning approximately $13,000, less than one-quarter of Chamberlain's salary. That was the financially prudent move, but it meant accepting as well that it would be a few years before the Warriors were championship contenders again.
Hannum personally felt the team should not trade Chamberlain, who was, after all, the leading scorer in the history of the game and the man who had gotten his team to the finals the year before. But the decision was not his to make. It was up to Franklin Mieuli, the man Chamberlain had publicly insulted at the beginning of the season.
