 When he became a Laker , Chamberlain built a million @-@ dollar mansion he called the " Ursa Major " in Bel @-@ Air , as a play on his nickname " The Big Dipper " . It had a 2 @,@ 200 @-@ pound pivot as a front door and contained great displays of luxury . Robert Allen Cherry , journalist and author of the biography Wilt : Larger than Life , describes his house as a miniature Playboy Mansion , where he regularly held parties and lived out his later @-@ notorious sex life . This was also helped by the fact that Chamberlain was a near @-@ insomniac who often simply skipped sleeping . Designed according to his preferences , the house was constructed with no right angles , and had an " X @-@ rated " room with mirrored walls and a fur @-@ covered waterbed . Chamberlain lived alone , relying on a great deal of automated gadgets , with two cats named Zip and Zap and several Great Dane dogs as company . In addition , Chamberlain drove a Ferrari , a Bentley , and had a Le Mans @-@ style car called Searcher One designed and built at a cost of $ 750 @,@ 000 in 1996 . Following his death , in 2000 Chamberlain 's estate was valued at $ 25 million . 
