Lakers News: End-Of-Year Award To Be Renamed After Lakers Great Wilt Chamberlain

Some league hardware is being named after Wilt the Stilt.

At long last, the Big Dipper is posthumously dipping into the league's recent year-end awards naming fest!

The NBA announced in a press statement earlier today that it would be renaming oodles of end-of-season trophies after some of the league's all-time greats.

Wilt Chamberlain, the Hall of Fame center who spent the last five of his 14 NBA seasons with your Los Angeles Lakers, will have the Rookie of the Year award re-dubbed the Wilt Chamberlain Rookie of the Year award. Lakers fans can count this as a win, since Chamberlain, along with Jerry West, was a crucial part of four NBA Finals-bound L.A. franchises, winning in 1972 as the capper to a then-record 69-win season that included 33 straight, a still unsurpassed regular season mark for consecutive Ws.

Chamberlain of course was not a Laker when he himself was named Rookie of the Year in 1960. The 7'1" superstar was drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors, and made an instant impact as one of the titans of the game at that point, along with Boston Celtics star center Bill Russell. Chamberlain was named to the All-NBA First Team and became an All-Star as a rookie with the 49-26 Warriors. 

He posted eye-popping averages of 37.6 points and 27 rebounds a night for Philadelphia in 46.4 (!) minutes. That club would advance as far as the Eastern Division Finals (the equivalent now of the Eastern Conference Finals, though there was one fewer round in the playoffs then), where it would fall to Russell's Celtics in six games.

One quibble: with all these awards now re-named, what happens to all-time players who are still active, like 18-time Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James or his fellow four-time champ, Golden State Warriors revolutionary Stephen Curry? Surely anyone would concede that this pair is within the NBA's all-time top 10, if not higher.