Wilt Chamberlain’s recorded career high block total is 23 blocks in a single game
Maybe this is common knowledge by now, but I just recently noticed that there are now 143 games on basketball reference that have Wilt’s block totals recorded. Most of them are from his Laker days, closer to 1973 when blocks officially started getting recorded, but we can at least pull back the curtain a little bit on some of these absurd Wilt stats us newborns hear about.
Tallying up all 143 games, Wilt recorded 1,098 blocks, which averages out to about 7.7 blocks per game, and remember, this is mostly Wilt in the back half of his career. If he held this average for all 1,045 career games, he would surpass 8,000 career blocks, more than double Hakeem Olajuwon, the current all time leader.
The 23 block game was actually recorded during his first season in LA, the 1968-69 season, which means his actual career high is probably quite a bit higher. And this average mostly holds for the playoffs as well. Through 71 recorded playoff games, Wilt totaled 513 blocks, a 7.2 per game average.