Shades of Wilt: Jim Cleamons

*Today, October 12, 2025, marks 26 years since the passing of sporting icon Wilt Chamberlain. The following is from former NBA player and coach Jim Cleamons, interviewed in 2024, about his former teammate. This is a portion of a larger project.

*Cover photo: Wilt Chamberlain in 1968. Photo credit: The Desert Sun, page 13.

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Jim Cleamons, guard 

Teams: Los Angeles Lakers, Cleveland Cavaliers, New York Knicks, Washington Bullets

Career length: 1971-1980

Wilt Teammate: 1971-1972

Cleamons, a North Carolina native, was drafted 13th overall in 1971 out of Ohio State University by the Lakers. He played nine seasons before a lengthy and successful coaching career. He first heard the name Wilt Chamberlain as a youth while reading Sport Magazine and any basketball publication that he could get his hands on. 

“I didn’t know the personalities because I was too young to follow the sport, but I certainly was aware of the name Wilt Chamberlain and his exploits as a player,” says Cleamons. 

Cleamons’ earliest memories of basketball was the 1957 National Championship between Kansas and his home state UNC, a 54-53 Tar Heel win in triple overtime - 23 points and 14 rebounds for Chamberlain - when he was 7 years old.

How fitting then that he was drafted to the Lakers. The team was coming off of a 4-1 Western Conference Final defeat to the Milwaukee Bucks the previous spring. Cleamons was the only rookie on the team. His good friend Jim McMillian, a fellow North Carolinian who was also a teammate of his for the 1977-78 season with the Knicks, was the next youngest player on the ‘72 Lakers, at 23 years of age. 

Cleamons, as a "wet-noised rookie", saw it as an honor to be able to bounce anything off of Chamberlain and absorb anything he could from the likes of the 35-year-old Chamberlain, superstar guard Jerry West and superstar forward Elgin Baylor, as well as head coach Bill Sharman and assistant coach K.C. Jones. Cleamons points out that there was no rookie hazing on that team. The veteran trio were all true pros.

“They had nothing to prove other than just trying to be the best basketball players that they could be,” says Cleamons. The respect between all was mutual. 

“I was like a kid in a candy store,” states Cleamons. “I’d just sit back and watch and observe. I was the rookie apprentice and I observed everything that they said and did,” Cleamons continues, noting that all of his observations helped him during the remainder of his career and into his coaching days. Cleamons’ coaching career included being one of Phil Jackson’s assistant coaches for two different stints - 1989-1996 with the Bulls and 1999-2004 with the Lakers.    

On Jan. 9, 1972, the Bucks defeated the Lakers 120-104 at Milwaukee Arena, ending the Lakers’ 33-game streak. Chamberlain’s 15 points and 12 rebounds were countered by the young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with 39 and 20 rebounds. The veteran Chamberlain could not manhandle the young and spry Abdul-Jabbar, who was once his protege. It was this realization, Cleamons says, that led Chamberlain to call a pregame meeting during the Lakers’ Western Conference Finals series against those same Bucks. The Lakers won the series in six games. 10.8 points and 19.3 rebounds per game for Chamberlain. The veteran blocked Abdul-Jabbar a total of 17 times in the series.  

“That proved to me that he understood his mortality and his vulnerability of playing Kareem at his stage in his career and Kareem’s stage of his career,” says Cleamons. “Because he had a lot of respect for Kareem and the Milwaukee Bucks.” 

Cleamons says that he saw it as growth in Chamberlain to gather the group - “an aberration for that season”. The instance proved, he says, that Chamberlain was a team player whose ego was not above the team. 

“That spoke volumes of him saying to the team ‘I’ve got my hands full and it’s going to take a team effort in order for us to win this series and go on to the NBA Finals.’”

Throughout his lengthy career, Cleamons had the pleasure of playing with Chamberlain, and also coached Shaquille O’Neal with the Lakers. He has a special appreciation for what his former teammate accomplished. 

“Let me ask you, when was the last time you looked in an NBA record book?”, Cleamons offers rhetorically, alluding to Chamberlain’s many records. Of the people that dismiss Chamberlain, his former teammate bluntly says, “They don’t really know what they speak of.”

Chamberlain himself was never shy about letting his greatness be told. In his 1997 autobiography Who’s Running the Asylum?, he puts together his own All-Star team of NBA greats using a specific criteria, essentially based around a player’s impact on the total game. He references himself as one player who could control every facet. Chamberlain was someone that knew how good he was and throughout his life let people know how good he was. Cleamons remembers his big man teammate as a kind person who was gracious towards him, and someone who “understood who he was and what he wanted to accomplish in life.” Having an ego is something that Chamberlain earned, says Cleamons. 

“Behind his ego, he was also very real,” says Cleamons. “Wilt had a persona. He lived that throughout because he was Wilt Chamberlain. Yes he had an ego, but he had a right to have an ego.” 

One instance of Chamberlain’s humility came during one particular practice that season. The session helped grow and solidify the respect and admiration that Cleamons had for his teammate’s competitiveness. On this day in practice, “The Big Fella” wanted to race him.

Cleamons, nicknamed “Rook” on that team, took the challenge. He won the race, and says today that Chamberlain never challenged him to a rematch, pointing out the honorable quality of his teammate. 

“It was just like, ‘Ok we raced, and that was that and we move on.’ He was a genuine person.” 

The coaching career of Cleamons, college and professional, led him to three different colleges and four additional NBA teams (Dallas Mavericks, New Orleans Hornets, Bucks, and Knicks) in addition to the Bulls and Lakers stints. Because of this, he never got the opportunity to spend time with Wilt after their playing days. 

“I was just sorry that I didn’t have enough time with him,” says Cleamons, while mentioning all three of his legendary teammates that now have all passed on. 

“It was a wonderful era in the history of basketball. I can say to this day that we had a good relationship.”