Victor Wembanyama vs. Wilt Chamberlain: Who’s the real NBA block leader?

San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama made history last week.

With 12 blocks in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the 22-year-old broke the official NBA record for most blocked shots in a playoff game.

Wemby’s block party came in a losing effort, but the team’s official social media account made sure to shout out the remarkable performance, posting a list of his Game 1 achievements, leading with the big one: “Most blocks ever in an NBA Playoffs game.”

From social media to national TV airwaves, Wembanyama’s historic defensive outing was a major talking point in NBA circles. The 7-foot-4 center had done something no other player had done before.

There’s just one problem.

Credible evidence is mounting that Wilt Chamberlain blocked way more shots in an NBA playoff game. There are documented reports that he bested Wembanyama’s “official record” multiple times.

Coincidentally, just days before Wembanyama’s record-setting night, groundbreaking data was unearthed and published on Basketball Reference, the leading sports statistics site, that suggests Chamberlain and others have topped 12 blocked shots in the playoffs. Unfortunately for those Hall of Fame rim protectors, the numbers are not considered official because they were registered before the 1973-74 season — the NBA’s first season of official block totals.

Heading into Game 6 of the West semifinal matchup on Thursday, with the Spurs holding a 3-2 lead, Wembanyama has established himself as a playoff megastar on both ends, even tallying more blocks (22) than the entire Timberwolves roster in this series (19). But as Wembanyama begins to rewrite the history books, a mystery looms above the game’s preeminent shot-blocker and the sport at large:

Who really owns the NBA blocked shot record?

The 16-block game lost to history

By the time Chamberlain joined the Los Angeles Lakers in 1968, the then-32-year-old had already etched his name in the NBA record books numerous times. In 1962, he scored a record-breaking 100 points. Two years before that, he tallied the most rebounds (55) in a single game. Following his career, NBA Encyclopedia, the league’s online resource on NBA.com which appears to no longer be active, claimed that Chamberlain had established 72 league records, 68 of which were held by himself alone.

But interestingly enough, none of those hallowed records included blocks. That’s because Chamberlain played his last game in April of 1972 — a year before the league started tracking blocks officially.

Nonetheless, Chamberlain’s shot-blocking abilities were documented regularly. In Game 5 of the 1969 Western Division series, to clinch a trip to the NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics, Chamberlain rejected a whopping 16 shots against the Atlanta Hawks.

Sixteen shots. Four more than Wembanyama registered last Monday for the record.

We are aware of this 16-block figure because it came from a newspaper report from the game. Mike Morrow, a sportswriter for the Daily Breeze in Southern California, wrote of Chamberlain’s remarkable performance with specifics:

“So, he did the things he had to do. And that would be to score 16 points, get 29 rebounds and block 16 shots as the Lakers beat the Hawks, 104-96, in the final game of the NBA Western Division series at the Forum.”

Video evidence exists of the game, suggesting that the NBA has the game film in its entirety in a vault somewhere. In a clip posted last year on YouTube from the account Rare NBA Footage, the audience sees Chamberlain swatting away multiple Hawks shots in succession.

Like Wembanyama, who admitted to being gassed after his 12-block game, Chamberlain also complained of fatigue following his block party. In the Daily Breeze report, Murrow made note of Chamberlain saying he could barely keep his eyes open following the 12:30 p.m. ET tipoff in Atlanta.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been more exhausted,” Chamberlain said. “Playing at this hour was bad enough, but Atlanta really gives me a workout. I’m glad this series is over. I don’t think I’d survive another of these games.”

Morrow saw Chamberlain leaning back in his chair in such a way that he “looked like he had just returned from an afternoon of Christmas shopping.” In the 14th paragraph of the game story, Morrow again referenced the eye-opening block figure as if to emphasize its importance.

“But [Chamberlain] definitely was awake on Sunday. He made a couple of unbelievable slam dunk shots and his 16 blocked shots speak for themselves.”

During a late timeout, Chamberlain received a standing ovation from The Forum crowd after a particular string of game-saving blocks. Even the opposing coach, Rich Guerin, was amazed by Chamberlain’s defensive prowess, saying “there was no way he could have blocked those shots, but he did.”

Evidently, the echo from that remarkable defensive performance grew silent over time.

Despite the video footage, documented accounts from at least one reporter and the thousands who watched the game in attendance at The Forum, the NBA does not recognize it as the official record.

But thanks to the work of a man named Michael Lynch, the leading NBA statistics site is vetting pre-official block statistics and publishing the numbers for all to see.

The Wilt Chamberlain Project

We know the tally of Babe Ruth’s home runs. We know about Gordie Howe’s goals and assists in the NHL. But Chamberlain’s blocks are mere ghosts lost to history.

Is it possible that the greatest shot-blocker in NBA history has zero official blocks to his name?

Such a thought never sat right with Lynch, a former ESPN researcher who now leads Sports Reference’s statistical projects as the Executive Director of Data. He recently embarked on a massive undertaking that has the potential to change the way we look at the game.

It all started last fall when a researcher named Tariq Jabbar alerted Lynch to a finding, a revelation tucked into an old newspaper clipping that would soon take over Lynch’s free time. Jabbar got his hands on full season block totals for the Portland Trail Blazers for the 1970-71 through 1972-73 seasons, published locally in The Oregonian. That is, before the NBA began tracking the stat officially in 1973-74.

Nestled in those newspaper clippings, the tallies of Blazers blocks, steals, turnovers and fastbreak baskets were printed. Remarkably, the same figures were tabulated for opponents. None of which have been published on official channels before.

To Lynch, the implication was astonishing: someone was secretly tracking blocks and other secondary stats on NBA games for years before it became “official” leaguewide. In all his years researching the NBA and compiling databases — including the all-time list of every game-winning buzzer beater in NBA history — Lynch had never come across such comprehensive numbers.

Lynch prefers the term “pre-official” as opposed to “unofficial,” which implies inaccuracy. It was not uncommon for player turnovers to be recorded pre-officially on scorer’s reports years before it became “official.” Before 1970, team trainers and other employees were tracking these numbers by hand and many were shared to reporters to allow the public to receive a more full account of the game. But a season-long tracking of blocks, steals and turnovers? That was new.

Lynch wondered: Were there other stats hidden in the pages of old newspapers waiting to be catalogued for the masses on Basketball Reference?

There was only one way to find out. In September, Lynch took to a Reddit forum called “VintageNBA” with Jabbar’s discovery and asked if anyone had gotten their hands on anything similar.

“Would love to gather as much as possible,” he typed to the group.

Within minutes, Lynch got a hit. A user named “OldandSlow4326” posted that the Long Beach Independent published Chamberlain’s season block totals on April 1, 1973.

“It blew my mind,” Lynch tells Yahoo Sports now.

Replying to the post, another VintageNBA user chimed in: “I’ve never seen a season total given for any NBA player pre official before.”

Lynch looked it up in the online newspapers archives, and there it was. On Page “S-6” in the Sunday edition of the Long Beach Independent, above an auto painting ad promising discounted jobs for $39, was an article written by Doug Ives, a staff writer for the paper, detailing the Lakers’ season.

After sharing Chamberlain’s scoring and rebounding stats, Ives printed the following revelation: “Unofficially, Wilt had 446 blocks, an average of 5 ½ per game.”

In a basketball sense, the figure was astounding. Officially, the most blocks registered in a single season is Mark Eaton’s 456 in 1984-85 for the Utah Jazz, which means that Chamberlain possibly held the unofficial record without anyone knowing it for over a decade, with 446 or 5.4 per game. (Ives rounded 5.439 up to a tidy 5.5 for Chamberlain’s blocks per game figure.) But Lynch couldn’t know that for sure, because it is within the realm of possibility that Chamberlain had blocked more shots in a season than the one reported in the Long Beach Independent.

Here’s the thing: By that point, in 1971-72, Chamberlain was 36 years old, many years past his prime. If Chamberlain’s body aged like most players, his shot-blocking powers would have peaked much earlier. Based on age curves, it wasn’t out of the question that Chamberlain blocked more than 500 shots in a season. Or even multiple seasons.

“I decided,” Lynch says, “I needed to research this as much as possible.”

At that point, Lynch buckled in and went down a dark, twisted NBA rabbit hole, trying to find every game story about Chamberlain ever published. How many blocked shots of Chamberlain had been reported, sitting there in plain sight inside the pages of old newspaper clippings across the country?

For four months, he spent his evenings downloading, reading and ingesting recaps of every Chamberlain pro game that he could find, hoping he could record every single game that he had played in the NBA. By Lynch’s best estimate, he read over 5,000 game recaps during the length of the project. Maybe closer to 10,000. What he found, much to his surprise, was that block totals of players like Chamberlain were often mentioned in NBA game stories and corroborated by multiple accounts like they were widely tracked with precision and care.

Now it was time to add it all up. What if you charted all of those reports and published those totals for a statistical registry? How much would it alter the record books?

That’s what Lynch set out to do. He didn’t find every game. But after months of research, Lynch was ready to present his findings to the public.

‘Rejected By The Record Books’

The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference is held every year in Boston as a gathering of the nerdiest, most hardcore fans and appraisers of the sports world. Lynch applied to speak at the top sports convention of its kind, knowing he would have a captive audience. It might even shake free some more box scores or research ideas.

The MIT Sloan staff accepted his proposal and, in March, Lynch got on stage and delivered the talk: “Rejected by the Record Books: How Many Shots Did Wilt Chamberlain Actually Block?”

Inside the ballroom, he shared his findings. At that juncture, he found totals for 184 out of 1,045 regular-season games, which represented nearly 20% of Chamberlain’s career. Block totals reported in those games were as little as zero blocks and as high as 23. Yes, 23.

Lynch assured the discerning crowd that he didn’t write down every figure he saw. He sought to confirm figures with multiple accounts, and in the rare occasions that credible reports differed on a number, he split the difference or sided with one that had a stronger track record.

Sometimes, Lynch was forced to discard reported numbers that gave blurry estimates. The Boston Record American, for example, reported that Chamberlain “must have blocked 50 shots” against the Detroit Pistons on November 5, 1960. You won’t find that total on Basketball Reference or any others with similarly unspecific guesses.

So how many blocks did Chamberlain average? In the sample of over 200 games that Lynch found to be credibly reported, Chamberlain averaged a mind-blowing 8.2 blocks per game in the regular season and 7.2 blocks in the playoffs. (Lynch recorded more than half of Wilt’s playoff games.) For perspective, Wembanyama just unanimously won the 2025-26 Defensive Player of the Year vote while averaging 3.1 blocks per game in the regular season, and the all-time career average blocks record is shared by Eaton and Wembanyama at 3.5 per game.

Chamberlain also played in an era in which there was no 3-point shot and players shot more closely to the basket and thus, had a better chance of a paint-dweller like Chamberlain swatting it away. All told, Lynch’s best estimate is that Chamberlain blocked over 9,000 shots in his NBA career. The current all-time leader is Hakeem Olajuwon with 3,830 blocks, less than half the Chamberlain projected figure.

But even though Chamberlain averaged 8.2 blocks in Lynch’s sample, he emphasized that it’s not accurate to say that 8.2 was his career rate. Missing reports were more common in Chamberlain’s earlier years when he was presumably in his prime blocking more shots. Lynch’s best estimate, given typical age curves for NBA players, is that Chamberlain’s average was even higher, at 8.8 career blocks per game.

The numbers confirmed something that many who had watched Chamberlain had already believed, that Wilt the Stilt is the greatest shot-blocker the game has ever seen. Sixers statistics employee Ron Pollack — the son of legendary 76ers statistician Harvey Pollack who wrote down “100” on a sheet of paper and handed it to Wilt for the iconic 1962 photograph — told Lynch he believes Chamberlain “definitely” averaged double-digit blocks early in his career.

When it comes to playoff figures, Lynch was pleased to report that he catalogued 81 of his 160 career postseason games. The high mark, of course, was the 16-block game against the Hawks. Lynch, for the record, isn’t sure that represents Chamberlain’s career high. He even calls it “unlikely.”

The project is ongoing. In a Sports Reference blog post last week titled, “Thousands of Unofficial Game-Level Totals Added to Basketball Reference,” Lynch laid out all the new information that he and his staff have vetted, including the following Chamberlain statistics. Currently on Chamberlain’s player page on Basketball Reference, there is an Easter egg for NBA enthusiasts. One figure is listed in Chamberlain’s block column, dating back to Jabbar’s finding.

In the 1972-73 season row, it shows 446 — the number of blocks Chamberlain recorded in his final season, according to Ives’ report in the Sunday edition of the paper.

Lynch and the Sports Reference team have posted more and more data. As of last week, fans can for the first time pull up Chamberlain’s game logs and see many block totals in those columns dating back to his rookie season of 1959-60. Six blocks in his NBA debut. Nine blocks on Halloween of 1959. A big chunk of his playoff games, which generated more press attention, have been posted.

Fans who visit Basketball-Reference.com and use its Player Index tool to look up the most blocked shots in an NBA playoff game won’t find Wembanyama’s name leading the list. Instead, they’ll see Chamberlain’s 16-block effort in that April 1969 playoff game.

Not only that, there’s former San Francisco Warriors big man Nate Thurmond, who registered a 14-block outing against Wilt’s Lakers in that same playoff run. Lynch found that one, too. The Blazers figures are now on the site as well along with many of Bill Russell’s stats, including a 12-block outing in the playoffs in The Spectrum against Philadelphia.

In fact, according to Basketball Reference tracking as of Thursday, Wembanyama is in a six-way tie for fourth place on the known single-game playoff block list. Chamberlain also recorded 13 blocks in a Game 1 win during the 1969 NBA Finals against Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics, following his 16-block performance to close out the Hawks the series before.

An NBA Finals game, yes, but not official.

Wembanyama’s 12-block game isn’t the only official record that may be topped by Chamberlain. Wembanyama could soon be chasing the official regular-season record of 15 blocks set by Shaquille O’Neal and Manute Bol, but Chamberlain could be the true record-holder there as well.

On Christmas Day in 1968, Wilt and the Lakers took on the Phoenix Suns with a reported 10,355 people in attendance, which at the time was the largest attendance ever for a Phoenix game. Many more than that watched at home since it was broadcast nationally on ABC. The national stage may have inspired Chamberlain in ways that the Suns could not have ever predicted. On national television, Jack Twyman, ABC’s top analyst, was critical of Chamberlain in a halftime interview with the Lakers center and Chamberlain destroyed the competition thereafter. “Unofficially, Chamberlain was credited with blocking 23 shots, including 15 in the second half, and not once was called for goal-tending,” reported the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

The game came up in 2018 on a popular post in an NBA Reddit forum, the user begging anyone to confirm the 23-block account with video. Because here’s the crazy thing: despite it being broadcast on ABC, footage of the game does not exist. Apparently, the ABC tapes have been recorded over.

“Please. Basketball gods. Let this one game surface in a forgotten vault of ABC,” wrote the Reddit poster.

Much to Lynch’s disappointment, it has not surfaced.

Will Wilt’s blocks ever become official?

It all raises a question: Why doesn’t the NBA treat Chamberlain as the rightful owner of the blocks record? Will they ever?

The NBA only recognizes blocks as an official stat beginning in the 1973-74 season. To be clear, as Lynch found, blocks were widely tracked before that season, but it was not called official until then. Longtime Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan, a Curt Gowdy Award winner in the Basketball Hall of Fame, reported the change in an October 1973 edition of the Globe:

“Thanks to a resolution railroaded through last Spring by some energy PR Men — especially ABA man Rudy Martzke of Buffalo — the official NBA box scores will now carry a breakdown of alleged offensive rebounds, steals and blocked shots, thus inviting cheating the Watergate men couldn’t even have envisioned.”

With his signature sharp wit, Ryan wrote he had already been hand-tracking offensive rebounds, but bemoaned the expansion of the box score. “Why don’t they just stuff the statistics in their metaphorical briefcases, and go back to watching the games?” Ryan wrote. The NBA in 1973-74 began publishing weekly statistical leaders that included blocked shots and steals.

There is also evidence that the league was quietly tracking block totals even before 1973-74 as something of a trial balloon. When Bob McAdoo won the Rookie of the Year award in 1972-73, the wire stories across the country all shared an interesting detail: he blocked 216 shots in his opening campaign. Lynch also found that the Lakers’ 1973-74 media guide mentions that the NBA had a ‘new statistical category’ in 1972-73 and that Elmore Smith blocked exactly 300 shots.

But even though there is evidence that the league, its teams and reporters were tracking blocks on a regular basis in 1972-73 and earlier, Chamberlain’s block column on NBA.com remains notably empty.

For its part, the NBA does make sure to add the caveat that any block records only go back so far. In this widely shared post on X, the caption reads: “Wemby (12 blocks) set a NEW record tonight, for most blocks in an NBA playoff game since 1973-74.”

Still, by that post, fans would never have known that Chamberlain and others have topped 12 blocks multiple times in the playoffs. To this day, none of his blocks are recognized by the league. A league spokesperson told Yahoo Sports that there is currently no plan to expand official coverage beyond 1973-74.

Which brings us back to the day after Wembanyama officially posted 12 blocks in Game 1. Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch told reporters his staff reviewed the videotape and claimed that some of Wembanyama’s blocks were uncalled goaltends, which, if properly officiated in Finch’s view, would have added eight points to the Timberwolves’ score.

“Obviously, he had a historic night, but when we looked at them, at least four of them were goaltending,” Finch said.

If the Timberwolves’ accounting was accurate, it also would have left Wembanyama with only eight blocks, short of the official record. In the end, the NBA did not agree with Finch, keeping Wembanyama’s 12 blocks as the official playoff record. But the block totals, it has to be said, are in dispute.