This really made me laugh. There you were, sitting in D. C. following a team in Los Angeles, while at the very same time (1972), I was in Berkeley, California, obsessively following the New York Knicks. My favorite basketball team of all time until these recent Warriors: Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Earl the Pearl Monroe, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, not to mention bench players like Jerry Lucas, Cazzie Russell, Dave Stallworth, and—wait for it—Phil Jackson. I loved these guys.

I grew up in Brooklyn in the ’50s and ’60s. The Knicks were awful. In those days there were only eight teams in the league, two divisions of four, and six of the eight would make the playoffs every year: in each division, 2 plays 3, winner plays 1, and then those two division winners for the championship. In the Eastern Division it was always the Celtics and (Philadelphia) Warriors 1 and 2, leaving the Knicks and the Syracuse fucking Nationals (now the 76ers) to fight it out for which one misses the cut. I mean, those Knicks were dreadful. Don’t even get me started.

I had a tabletop radio on my nightstand, and late at night you’d get long-distance skip off the ionosphere and you could bring in, from my bedroom in Brooklyn, WBZ in Boston or WCAU in Philadelphia. I spent more time listening to Bill Russell’s Celtics and Wilt Chamberlain’s Warriors than I did to my own Knicks. When they played them, those guys would eat Ray Felix or Charlie Tyra alive.

The league was still young in those days, and they would promote it by playing regular-season games on neutral courts in non-league cities. (That’s how Wilt ended up scoring his 100 points in Hershey, Pennsylvania, of all places.) In league towns like New York, they would schedule four-team doubleheaders where you could see half the league for a single ticket. My buds and I would always make sure we got there in time for the first game, where you could actually watch a couple of good teams play (maybe Oscar Robertson’s Cincinnati Royals and Elgin Baylor’s Minneapolis Lakers) before the Knicks got drubbed in the nightcap. On a really good night, you might catch the Warriors and Celtics, Chamberlain against Russell, in the opener.

So yeah, I remember Wilt Chamberlain. I remember when he scored the 100 against the Knicks in Hershey. I remember the year he averaged 50 a game. But to me, the most astonishing statistic is the minutes played. The man literally never sat down. He was a force of nature. People today simply don’t know how good he was.

I don’t really know who was the greatest basketball player of all time, but I know it was either Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, or LeBron James. One of those three. The question is, who is the fourth face on Mount Rushmore? So many candidates to choose from: Bill Russell. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Oscar Robertson. Elgin Baylor. Earvin Johnson. Jerry West. Julius Erving. Larry Bird. Pete Maravich. Kobe Bryant. Steph Curry. The mind boggles. How do you possibly pick one from that list?