His love for the game did over come his embarrassment though. He would play for any team that would have him including Police Athletic Leagues, Church teams, and at the Local YMCA (1). With his families help, he was able to get a great head start on his career for the future.
Even though most of his teen years consisted of basketball, when he was younger he just enjoyed hanging with friends, playing dodge ball and wall ball, and roof jumping. Yet he still found time to love school. In high school his favorite subject was math, and in college he majored in Communications at the University of Kansas (6). Also he studied business and foreign languages there (1). By the end of high school over 200 colleges were trying to recruit him (3).
In the end he chose the University of Kansas, to get away from the big cities and because of the coach Phog Allen. Although he chose this school over all the others, he still had a hard time fitting in. Especially since the school was segregated (1). Wilt Chamberlain once said, "I was a brash young man of color coming into a white societal sport and taking over-commanding and demanding. Do you think I was liked for that?" (1). He did think like and quickly joined one of the black fraternities on campus (1). One way he tried to get out in the open besides sports was tape-recording a show once a week on station KLWN in Lawrence, playing records and talking about sports (6).
In his college debut he played on the freshman team against varsity. He dominated the game and led the freshman team to victory, the first time that this had ever happened. In his first varsity game he had 52 points and 31 rebounds. Soon he led the Jayhawks to the NCAA finals where they lost to North Carolina in triple overtime. He was elected to the All-American team twice. Quit College because he said "the game I was forced to play at (Kansas) wasn't basketball. It was hurting my chances of ever developing into a successful professional player".
(Biography) Fortunately Bill and his family were slightly able to escape these hardships. ... (Biography) In 1957 he helped the Celtics win their first NBA title. ... (Biography) Bill has definitely made it as far as his amazing basketball career went. ...