Wilt Hits Triple Digits

Frank Deford on Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game, 50 years ago today:

It's often difficult to measure the quality of an individual achievement in a team sport, and yes, on March 2, 1962, Wilt's Warriors were playing the Knicks, the worst team in the league, whose starting center was injured. It was a meaningless game, but still and all: 100 points in any game in the NBA! In all of Division One college ball, only one guy has gone for a century and that was Frank Selvy of Furman — and that was 58 years ago.
Yet, curiously, Chamberlain's accomplishment has needed time to become accepted for the wonder that it is. There were, maybe, 4,000 people in attendance, and many of those had primarily come to see members of the Baltimore Colts and Philadelphia Eagles football teams scrimmage at basketball in the preliminary.
Chamberlain averaged 50 points a game that season, and his act seemed old. Scoring 100 points didn't even merit the front page in New York newspapers. Chamberlain was often dismissed as just a "goon," as tall players were often called then.
The greatest public certification you could receive in 1962 was to be invited to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS. Wilt was accorded that honor, but unbeknownst to him, only to be made a fool of, when a dwarf named Johnny Puleo was assigned to run out and pretend to bite the giant's leg. Scoring 100 points? The audience only roared, mocking the big freak.
How ancient that game seems now: no TV, barely a photograph. I was with Wilt a couple of times, years later, when pandering fans would come up and tell him they saw him score the 100 — in Madison Square Garden. Wilt didn't bother to call them out. "Thank you, my man," he would politely reply.

What the hell was the deal with the dwarf?  It is truly remarkable how little attention was paid to that game.