Wilt Chamberlain changed NBA rules
Like every sports, NBA was changing during the decades, improving in order to offer a fair basketball game. One of the players that changed some rules of the league was the legendary Wilt Chamberlain.
The giant had the habbit to score the free-throws in his own style: throwing the ball to the board and then jumping from the line to the basket. Actually this was like your own alley-oop, what you can see now in the NBA dunk contests. Because of this, it was created a new rule that forbids the player to cross the free-throw line while shooting the free-throw.
Another rule changed by the Wilt dangerous impact on the paint was that you cannot inbound passing the ball over the backboard. Why? Because Wilt was always there prepared to put that ball inside the rim.
But the most interesting rule changed by Wilt was the offensive goal-tending, preventing big men to interfere with the ball in the cylinder above the rim. Nowadays, this rule was changed back allowing the players to throw down spectacular alley-oops.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wilt_Chamberlain
http://www.nba.com/history/wilt_appreciation.html
Gratian Cormos, info@brainbasketball.net
