Harlem Globetrotters

Meadowlark Lemon: Beyond the Court to the Pulpit

Bill Thompson

For 22 years he was known as the “Clown Prince” of the Harlem Globetrotters. But for basketball Hall of Famer Meadowlark Lemon, there was a larger, much larger, purpose for his life.

When I met him in 1987, Lemon was eager to talk about not just basketball, but about God.

Just a year before our interview, Lemon was ordained a Christian minister. And proud as he was of his on-court accomplishments, Meadowlark Lemon had much bigger things on his mind.

Also, be aware that my very first question to him, as you are about to hear, was worded in such a way that his response was worded in the third person. I should emphasize that is not the way he normally talked about himself, but was simply answering the question the way I had framed it.

So here now, from 1987, Meadowlark Lemon.

Meadowlark Lemon died in 2015. He was 83.

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Wilt Chamberlain

Bill Thompson

Few people have had the kind of impact on a professional sport that Wilt Chamberlain had on the game of basketball.

In a career that started with the Harlem Globetrotters, the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain became a superstar and a record-setter.

To this day, no one has broken the record he’s best known for: scoring 100 points in a single game.

I met him in the fall of 1991, when he published an autobiography called “A View From Above.”

But in the interview you’re about to hear, there was one question I chose not to ask him, and I’ll tell you later why.

So here now, from 1991, Wilt Chamberlain:

That last remark — about “the numbers” in the book — was a reference to a statistic he included in his book that had nothing to do with basketball. Chamberlain claimed to have slept with 20,000 different women during his life.

Wilt Chamberlain was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1979.

He died in 1999 at age 63.