The greatest
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So we are down to comparing Wilt to Shaq? Really?
I mean I like Shaq and all, but how can anybody reach that conclusion?
Sure I can buy the argument of taking a modern day player like Anthony Davis putting him in a time machine and sending him back into time. That he would dominate. I mean the game has evolved this we all can agree on. Yet you guys aren’t wanting to look at the other side of the coin. What if we could bring a young boy Wilt into the future and let him harness his game with advancement in training technology, and coaching. Let that sink into your mind.
I mean they didn’t even keep track of blocked shots when Wilt was playing. He changed the game in every way. He holds records that still stand today.
The thing is a special player or a gifted player is just that. It doesn’t matter what era they are born in. I have no doubt in my mind a young Wilt growing up in todays game would still dominate. I always believe Wilt dominance would be so profound that they would change the rules of the game again.
You see Wilt was not only a gifted man but he had a lions heart. Even a post modern Wilt would give the best of the modern age all they could handle. King Lebron would find his ass on the floor picking up what’s left of his shattered ego if he locked horns with Wilt.
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You are missing the main component. By and large Wilt played for crappy teams where he was basically the entire team, except for a couple of years. Shaq, on the other hand, played for much better teams and had a much better supporting cast. Place Shaq in most of the teams Wilt played and see how his number dip.
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@JayHawkFanToo Actually, we already added that in. Notice the lower FG percentage combined with the higher shots attempted. Also, add in the extra free throws shot. You are dismissing that players Wilt went up against are about 5-10% shorter and about 10-20% lighter players/
Not to mention, Shaq was not “surrounded by talent.” He went to the Orlando Magic as the #1 overall pick. Meaning, they SUCKED. 21-61. Shaq comes in and, what do you know? They win 20 more games the very next season. And every season he was with them all the way up to 60 wins and a Confernece Finals run. He leaves, they lose 15 more games the next season… Shaq WAS the Magic.
Lakers, Shaq comes in. Wins 2 chips. Leaves and the year after he leaves they miss the playoffs… Shaw WAS the Lakers.
Goes to the Heat. Takes them from a .500 team to a Conference finals and wins a championship the next season. Shaq WAS the heat.
Shaq playoff stats: 24 ppg. .556 fg%, 16 consecutive playoffs made.
Wilt playoff stats: 22.ppg .522 fg% 10 consecutive playoffs made.
When Shaq turned it on he was as good as anyone ever. Period. To think that a player like Shaq wouldn’t have touched the game in the same way Wilt did is ignoring statistical data and common sense. They just didn’t make players that size back in the day. Wilt worked out more than most (everyone) in that era. He was the first guy to be so freakishly athletic for his size that he did change the game forever. But to say that nobody could have matched up with him EVER, it just isn’t a realistic opinion. The smartest guy on the planet is more than likely not THAT much smarter than the next smartest guy. Especially if considered over a 30+ year period. The fastest guy isn’t THAT much faster than the 2nd fastest guy. The guy with the best arm doesn’t throw THAT much harder than the guy with the 2nd best arm. The best bowler in the world isn’t THAT much better than the 2nd best bowler. Messi isn’t THAT much better than Ronaldo. Tiger Woods isn’t THAT much better than Jack Nicklaus (arguable either way), etc etc etc. In a world of BILLIONS of people, the odds of one man being THAT much better than the other billions is quite simply impossible. Hell, even than the hundreds of millions just in the U.S. over 30 years. Just not realistic.
This is my last post on this, as you or JayB have found no statistical or useful data to backup your side of this conversation. You are both just being stubborn and offering no real rebuttal other than what you have seen or heard about Wilt. @DoubleDD I’ll go ahead and throw you in with them. If you guys want to bring out statistical data or any other relevant facts please do. Otherwise, this conversation has gone as far as it will go.
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Actually his data makes my case and my logic stands completely unimpeached by anything you’ve added.
You can continue to introduce fallacies and compound them into anything you like. I took the time to point out your fallacies to you once, starting with the fact that you fallaciously slid the era back to the era BEFORE small ball, which was not EVEN the era I was comparing. And I took the time to point out clearly and logically why his data made my case. You found not one fallacy in my reasoning. You merely took off on some other fallacious tangents.
I am not going to go through the ritual of pointing out your fallacies again. I don’t want to be a grinch this early in the season.
I will just reassert the knowns.
Wilt actually did score 100 points in a game without charging, or traveling. He would have scored much, much more than 100 points that game had he been able to charge and travel at will. This is indisputable. How much is pure speculation. But when I was a kid, we all used to play grab by the rules for awhile and then occasionally just break all the rules for fun. We charged, and travelled, and hacked the charger, and so on. And what I remember is that if I could charge and travel at will, I was pretty much unstoppable. Because I was pretty strong and athletic, I could actually elude most of the gang tackling we did on the court to each other and I could hole the apple even with a guy or two holding me simply by getting to the rim. If I could do this, them imagine what Wilt might have done. Recall the impressive things Shaq, who couldn’t shoot a lick, did.
Wilt actually did average circa 50 ppg without charging, or traveling. He would have averaged vastly more than that had he been able to charge and travel at will. Again, this is indisputable.
Wilt actually did maintain a relatively high shooting percentage when shooting essentially unprecedentedly high total FGAs, and an astronomical FG% when he tightened his FGAs to totals closer to what other centers, like Shaq have shot, and he actually did this WITHOUT being able to charge at will and walk as many steps as needed to score a dunk. Thus it is hardly anything but mastering the obvious to infer he would have shot a vastly higher percentage during both periods of his career had he been able to travel and charge at will.
Shaq never did anything without being able to charge at will and walk as many steps as needed to score a dunk; that was how it was during the era that he played. Wilt was still alive and watching the game, when Shaq played. In an interview of Wilt and Big Russ both Wilt and Big Russ made clear that they BOTH would have hung much bigger numbers being able to charge and walk at will. Surely we can trust two of the greatest centers of all time mastering the obvious, can’t we? I mean, it isn’t like they were lying out of vanity. No one seriously doubts that Wilt and Big Russ and Nate Thurmond and Willis Reed, and would have put up much bigger numbers being able to walk and charge at will had they played in the Shaq era. The total trips in the Shaq era may have been significantly less, but charging and walking would have largely off set fewer trips with higher percentages.
Shaq never shot a finger roll, much less mastered several a game.
Shaq never shot a turn around, fade away jump shot from 10-15 feet that I recall, much less mastered it and shot it in great numbers for 5 years, as Wilt did.
Shaq never played Bill Russell, or Kareem Jabbar in their primes. Wilt did.
Wilt would have made an awesomely higher percentage both in his early years and in his later years had he been able to charge and walk at will. Its just indisputable.
The point is: Shaq–without shooting skill–made high percentages, because he COULD charge and walk at will, even in an era with more contact allowed. Being able to charge and walk at will is a huge advantage. And the advantage is greatly magnified when you are massively bigger and stronger, as Shaq was. Charging and walking at his size were such gigantic advantages for Shaq that it did not matter that he played in an era with more athletic footers (if and only if we stretch the concept of “more” athletic to include the likes of awkward, knee injured guys like Dikembe Mutombo and Pat Ewing. It is therefore astonishing to me that anyone could reach a conclusion other than that if Wilt played in Shaq’s era and were allowed to charge and walk like Shaq was, Wilt, being more athletic, and stronger, would have done even better than Shaq in Shaq’s era.
Really, Wilt might have scored 120 or a 130 points in a game even in Shaqs era had he been able to charge and walk like Shaq. He couldn’t have done it every night. But Ewing and Mutombo on bad knees? Wilt could pretty much have scored on them at will had he been able to charge and walk. Wilt could not have scored even a hundred on Olajuwan. But he could have hung 50-75 on Hakeem had Wilt been allowed to charge and walk playing Hakeem.
This underestimation, or even complete overlooking, of the advantage of charging and walking puzzles me.
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You should be a politician. You take numbers completely out of context to create a narrative that fits your premise.
You indicate that Shaq was “the team” everywhere he played and this is incorrect. Teams were built for Shaq to play and succeed and when the teams refused to spend more money to provide a superior supporting casts he bolted. His success is largely a result of the teams that were assembled for him; from that perspective there is no question he was very smart. Wilt played in an era where most teams had one or two stars and the rest were marginal players with a couple of exceptions one being the Celtics and the other the Lakers and a few other teams on and off. Wilt was the team and he repeatedly stated that he was expected to score 40 points first and then worry about any thing else. When he was told that he scored too much, guess what? He led the League in assist the next season with almost 9 apg; did Shaq ever did that? Wilt averaged almost twice as many apg than Shaq. Keep in mind that when he played for the Lakers he shot .605 from the field, and he scored from a lot farther out than Shaq whose scoring was mostly from within 3 feet of the basket after he plowed over offensive players, something Wilt was not allowed to do. Can you imagined the numbers and champions he would gave had if he played his entire career for the Celtics like Russell did?
Wilt played 5 less seasons than Shaq and yet he managed to score more points, grab more rebound, get more assist and play more minutes than Shaq…amazing, isn’t it? He was not only the superior athlete but a very durable one as well; over his career, he averaged more than 10 minutes more per game than Shaq.
No question that both were great players and both dominated in their respective eras; however, there is no way that Shaq is better than Wilt. I have seen tons of publications that rank all-time players and the better ones invariably have Wilt as one if the top 3 and some will have Kareem ahead based on his all time scoring but you have to take into account that he played 20 years in the NBA to Wilt’s 13. Some of the rankings created by younger analysts, not fully familiar with Wilt, tend to rank him lower but still ahead of Shaq.
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@justanotherfan I like what you did with the stats. But there is one crucial aspect that you missed.
CONDITIONING!
Wilt averaged OVER 48 minutes a game that special season. No way on God’s green earth could Shaq keep up his numbers throughout an entire game. His rate of scoring and rebounding would fall tremendously.
It adds to how much more of an athlete Wilt was. What guard could do that nowadays? Yet alone your 7’1 center while being the sole focus offensively and defensively.
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@jaybate-1.0 INDISPUTABLE
Oh man. JB said it’s indisputable so it is. He said it. Has to be. Can’t not be.
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@Kcmatt7 no sense trying to reason with some people. I have personally enjoyed the information you have brought to the table. Thanks for doing some of the research I was too lazy to do myself.
What cracks me up is the other side of the argument. Basically saying Wilt is the best ever isn’t enough. He has to be better than your guy in any era and it isn’t close or they will take their ball and go home.
Hahahaha
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It is well documented that Wilt did not run the floor when he was with the Sixers, and that if he picked up his third foul, he would not defend aggressively because he did not want to foul out. Wilt famously said, when asked why he walked up the floor on offense “they can wait for me.”
Additionally, averaging over 48 minutes a game means that Wilt’s scoring and rebounding were aided by playing OT games, something that a player can’t necessarily control. That artificially inflates his numbers a bit.
Wilt was a great player, but let’s remember that his scoring and rebounding numbers were aided by the fact that shooting percentages were pretty poor across the league. Let’s go back to the numbers.
As a whole, the league shot 42.6% in 1961-62. The next year it ticked up to 44.1%
As a whole, the league shot 45.0% in 1997-98. The next year it dropped to 43.7%.
Just for perspective, last year the league shot 45.2%.
You say hey, that’s just 2.4%, that’s not that much. When it comes to available rebounds (especially for a big guy like Shaq or Wilt) that’s a huge difference. The average team rebounding figure over 82 games in 1961-62 was 5713. In 1997-98, that figure was 3407. Last year, that figure was 3588.
Simply put, in the 60’s, the pace was high, lots of shots went up, but lots of shots were missed. A big guy like Wilt could grab offensive rebounds and get 6-7 putbacks in a single game to increase his scoring average, yet he still could not maintain a high shooting percentage. Wilt could also grab lots of defensive boards to push his rebounding numbers above 20.
There were 2300 less rebounding opportunities in 1997-98 than there were in 1961-62. That’s 28 rebounds a game for each team. A guy like Wilt that’s grabbing 25% of his teams rebounds anyway, 28 more boards is 7 rebounds a game.
When you compare eras, you have to compare the pace and game style, too. Poor shooting means lots of rebounds, which inflates the rebounding numbers, particularly for big men. Poor shooting at a fast pace really drives that up.
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I notice you didn’t dispute it.
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@jaybate-1.0 Well once I found that out I couldn’t dispute it my entire argument just went to crap.
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CJ Giles
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Et al
Wilt would have scored and rebounded vastly more in any era under any cirncumstances that then prevailed, where he could have charged and traveled at will.
The rest of the variables are tertiary in relation at most.
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It really is apples to oranges to compare the guys from the b&w TV era to other eras.
Wilt was great. They did indeed change the rules because of him.
Diet and health advances happen. 30,40,50 yrs later, there are 4 times as many people on the planet, there are simply more agile post players, who also exist in an era when the sport itself is more advanced and developed, simply due to all the preceding “greats” that played in previous eras.
MJ was great. My personal favorite of all time for 3 reasons: Charisma, competetive fire, and straight-up stats-stuffer. Oh, and he played both ends of the court, wish I could say the same about Kobe. And for those who still want to compare eras, OK…–> I will type stephen curry’s name in lowercase, since he is a footnote, playing in a less physical era than MJ. We all saw what happened when the Finals refs “let” Cleveland play physical with that wafer-straw man (curry), so save the strawman arguments.
You can say similar things even about past KU “eras”. How would RussRob and Chalmers physicality-D do with the refs of the last 2 years? We stifled people. Now I think we have to out-attritition and out-score foes. We couldnt outscore Nova, and they won the attrition battle (ask Devonte & Perry about their hogwash fouls).
Cliff Notes version: Each era has its scene “set” for its participants. Nobody “played” (in every sense of the word) their own era better than Michael Jeffrey Jordan. He became, and still is, larger than even his own sport.
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This video does a great job breaking down the pace/minutes arguments that I was making earlier.
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@dylans Super Joe! Back in the day, I always told people I disliked how Marino would look angrily at Duper and Clayton (WRs) and whatever WR came after whenever there seemed to be an incompletion. Montana and Elway didnt do that. Brett Favre didnt do that. Trent Green, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Alex Smith, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning didnt/dont do that. So as great as Marino’s stats were, give me Joe Montana. Interestingly, the farthest the Chiefs have ever gotten in the playoffs in 40yrs (since Len Dawson), is that 1 year when superJoe took them to the AFC Champ game in the 90s.
All that being said, in this era: Tom Brady is just cool in every way. He’s got it all. Alex Smith is underrated. Russell Wilson is overrated, and he and his cartoon coach botched their chance to be in the history books. Apparently they both forgot about some guy named Marshawn Lynch when it was 1st & goal at the 1yd line? Wilson (the dummy who threw the pick) could have called an audible to Lynch. What would have pinheadPete said once Seattle was Champs? They’ll never live that ignominy down.
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That video is a very biased view of how basketball was played and assumes that Wilt did not get the physical play of today’s game. I will post the following excerpt directly from the NBA site and tell me if Wilt did not take a physical pounding…you can draw your own conclusions…
Chamberlain’s inaugural season seemed to take a heavy toll on him. After the postseason loss to Boston, the rookie stunned his fans by announcing that he was thinking of retiring because of the excessively rough treatment he had endured from opponents. He feared that if he played another season, he would be forced to retaliate, and that wasn’t something he wanted to do.
In Chamberlain’s first year, and for several years afterward, opposing teams simply didn’t know how to handle him. Tom Heinsohn, the great Celtics forward who later became a coach and broadcaster, said Boston was one of the first clubs to apply a team-defense concept to stop Chamberlain. “We went for his weakness,” Heinsohn told the Philadelphia Daily News in 1991, "tried to send him to the foul line, and in doing that he took the most brutal pounding of any player ever… I hear people today talk about hard fouls. Half the fouls against him were hard fouls."
Despite his size and strength, Chamberlain was not an enforcer or a revenge seeker. He knew how to control his body and his emotions and rarely got into altercations. One indication of this was the astonishing statistic that not once in his 14-year career, in more than 1,200 regular and postseason games, did he foul out. Some people claimed he simply wasn’t aggressive enough. "My friends would say, ‘Hey man, you should throw [Bill] Russell in the basket, too.’ " said Chamberlain. "They said I was too nice, too often against certain of my adversaries."
Of course, Chamberlain didn’t retire. He simply endured the punishment and learned to cope with it, bulking up his muscles to withstand the constant shoving, elbowing and body checks other teams used against him.
In a virtual repeat of his rookie year, he poured in 38.4 points and 27.2 rebounds per game in 1960-61. The next season he made a quantum leap in his performance. Posting a phenomenal average of 50.4 points per game, he became the only player in history to score 4,000 points in a season.
What is interesting is when he projects recent player numbers to the 1962 numbers, they still don’t come close to Wilt’s numbers. BTW, the shot clock. or lack thereof, is a non-factor since it was implemented before Wilt joined the NBA.
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@JayHawkFanToo Dam I knew i had hopps for a white boy lol 31 inch in highschool.
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And on a side note Wilt is my first pick if i could make a all time fantasy team. His averages are the best of Russel, Hakeem, Shaq and Kareem, he just started his career later and didnt play as long, has the best average career for points and rebounds if not mistaken and the best average for a single season.
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@kjayhawks He also lead the league in assists one year just to prove he could do it.
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That is amazing considering that…
Kevin Durant is only 33.5"
Magic Johnson 30"
Karl Malone 28"
Larry Bird 28"
The average NBA vertical leap is 28"…of course these are standing and not running jumps.
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The key here is we are not comparing players from different eras.
I, at least, am engaging in counterfactual inference, which is valid logic widely used in social science and historical research, as well as strategic research.
What if Wilt played in either era and had been allowed to charge and travel at the same levels as Shaq in Shaq’s era? Would Wilt have scored more or less in either era having been allowed to charge and travel?
It’s defies logic to infer he would have scored more not charging and traveling. Of course he would have scored more.
I am fine with assuming there were fewer trips in Shaq’s era. If I were coaching Wilt in Shaq’s era, and Wilt could charge and travel like Shaq, I just would have had Wilt take a larger percentage of total FGAs. It would have been stupid not to.
This is not a difficult counterfactual inference at all. We have Shaq to prove that the big man talent of his era could not stop a guy (Shaq) that was Wilt’s size with zero touch (and less athleticism than Wilt) from scoring HIGH FG percentages. It’s a no brainer that Wilt would have done sharply better than Shaq in either era.
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@JayHawkFanToo Well I’m 6’1 and could dunk it.
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At 6-1, and bulking up to 325, and being allowed to charge and travel, you would have been narly as dominant as Shaq, assuming you had his quick feet and.could still dunk. But not quite. The height still counts for something. But charging and traveling are awesome edges.
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@JayHawkFanToo I just measured im 94 inches from the ground with my arms sterched all the way out, 10 foot is 120 inches plus the ball to dunk so I’d guess that 31 inches is fairly accurate. lol i bet im like 27 now. Can still grab the rim, just cant get the ball over.
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Well, I am shorter, cannot jump nearly as high and definitely cannot dunk but I was a serviceable hybrid guard in intramural play with a pretty decent outside shot. That’s it, that is my story and I am sticking to it. LOL.
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@jaybate-1.0 I cant shoot or dribble well but my calling card was defense and rebounding. put me in Self lol
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@JayHawkFanToo I wasnt a great player bye any stretch just slightly above average. I did have the highest vertical on the team but I was slow 4.70s 40 time. Going to a 2A school i also was the second tallest on the team which is why i played post lol.
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I had to study the effects of rules and institutions–formal and informal–once upon a time. Certain ones can have decisive effects. An informal rules change allowing charging and traveling by a 325 pound human being with quick feet has decisive effect. I watched many Laker games for several years of Shaq’s career. It’s still vivid!!!
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@jaybate-1.0 well if i keep eating unhealthy I may get there, currently 220 was 178 in HS
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I am about 86" with no shoes with both arms stretched and in my younger days and with a good head of steam I could just about touch the rim; standing under the basket standing still and jumping not even close…
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Actually, I am a total pushover for sound reasoning. I just don’t accept obvious fallacies.
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@kjayhawks said:
well if i keep eating unhealthy I may get there
It can be done.
Nothing is written.
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Ooooh, yessssssss!
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@jaybate-1.0 motivational pic Impossible is nothing lol
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@JayHawkFanToo bout 5 foot away I take two big steps and I can grab the rim, just did it, was out playing with my son he’s 16 months and he already can give me a bounce pass most of the time with a full sized ball lol.
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You are waaaaay ahead of me. I am close to 40 pounds heavier than I was in college. Sad face emoji here…
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I’m about 40 heavier than HS in the winter I trim down in the summer I don’t own a scale anymore but I’m 220 in winter 205 in summer. Working in a hot shop helps lol. If I get to 230 I’ll hit the gym. I did about 4 years ago and got back down to 185 but kids and marriage are stressful haha.
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The point of the shotclock piece was that it sped the game up. Before that, scores were often very low. The season before the shotclock, there wasn’t a single team in the NBA that averaged even 90 points a game - Boston led the league averaging 87.7 points per game, Syracuse was second at just a shade over 83.
The very next season the lowest scoring team in the league averaged 87.4 points per game. In just a single year, the average scoring output went from 79.5 to 93.1.
From there, scoring took off. 99 in 1955-56. 99.6 the next year. 106.6 the year after that. Then 108.2, 115.3, 118.1, and finally 118.8 in the 1961-62 season.
Let’s shift the discussion to another player from that era - Oscar Robertson - for just a second.
Oscar Robertson nearly averaged a triple double in 1960-61. He was 0.3 assists short. He averaged a triple double the next year. Is there anyone out there saying that Oscar Robertson was the most well rounded player of all time, because his stats from that era suggest that he was, or are we taking those stats with a grain of salt because they are just a bit off the wall from everything else in basketball history? The numbers for the Big O in each year from 1960 to the 64-65 season:
1960-61, 30.5 points, 10.1 rebounds, 9.7 assists
1961-62, 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, 10.1 assists
1962-63, 28.3 points, 10.4 rebounds, 9.5 assists
1963-64, 31.4 points, 9.9 rebounds, 11.0 assists
1964-65, 30.5 points, 9.0 rebounds, 11.5 assists
Look at those five seasons for a second. Might I also add that those were Oscar Robertson’s first five seasons in the NBA. He nearly averaged a triple double as a rookie. He was 20 assists short. In 1962-63, he was 42 assists short of averaging a triple double. In 63-64, he was 7 rebounds short of the triple double. The next year, he was 76 rebounds short. That is insane. Oscar Robertson was 62 assists and 83 rebounds short of averaging a triple double for FIVE CONSECUTIVE YEARS. If you average his first five years, the Big O did average a triple double for his first five years in the NBA. How is he not talked about as a top five all time player?!?!
Oh yeah, because we understand that the pace of play allowed for a guy to throw up those types of numbers. It’s not that Robertson wasn’t good. He was amazing. But he was like a pre-Lebron Lebron - he was a 25-7-7 guy. In today’s NBA, that’s what his numbers would be, just like in that era, Lebron would have slapped up 30-10-10.
In some ways, the 1960-1965 seasons are like the juiced ball/steroid era in baseball - not because guys were doing anything illegal, just that the numbers from that era are out of whack with anything that happened before or since. It’s like the 1997-2003 home run totals - just off the wall to where people don’t pay as much attention to them as they might have in another time.
We do that with every number from that era, except for Wilt’s 50 ppg scoring average.
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The shot clock is a non-issue because it was instituted in 1954 or 5 years before Wilt Joined the League in 1959 and has been in effect since then. Both Wilt and Shaq played their entire careers with the shot clock. I am not sure what is your point. The 3 point shot would be more relevant since it was introduced in 1979 and Wilt played his entire career without it and Shaq played his entire career with it and the lower percentage of 3 point FG, resulted in a change in the rebounding pattern.
As far as Oscar Robertson, you can probably check old posts and you will see that I have mentioned him may times as one of the greater and more complete players ever in the NBA. Much like Wilt, Oscar played his entire career without the 3 point shot and with it, his numbers might have been even better. I am not sure what sources you use but most of the ones I check usually have the Big “O” among the greats of the game.
Most of the so called basketball analysts are relatively young and never saw some of the older players like Wilt, Oscar, Jerry West, Bob Cousey, Walt Bellamy, Elgin Baylor, Bob Pettit and George Mikan (to name just a few) play, and what they know is mostly anecdotal and hence they really don’t give them the credit they deserve and give the more recent players more credit.
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@justanotherfan They won’t ever, EVER consider the talent gap that there was back then.
Players didn’t make enough for it to actually be enticing to play basketball competitively growing up as a kid. Nor did the programs exist at the time to do so. So those special athletes stood out even more back then. And now, these old guys think they saw God himself play the game of basketball and can’t let go of the fact that the game has gotten sooooo much better and the talent gap that existed back then doesn’t exist today thanks to year round training, the scientific advancements we have had and the money that is now involved.
Just to put in perspective how much more enticing it is to play pro basketball, the average NBA salary in 1965 was $15k The average salary in the US at the time was $6k. 1.5 times the average salary. Wilt was the first player to make $100k. Or rather, 15.5 times the average salary in the U.S.
In 2010, the average NBA salary was $5m. The average US salary at the time was $51k. Or rather nearly 100 times higher than the average salary. LeBron makes $30m or 588 times the average salary.
This doesn’t even include the European options failed players have today. If you failed back in the 60s, your career was over. And you couldn’t have saved up enough money to live off of the rest of your life.
Now you have guys like Stephon Marbury playing in China until he is 40 making millions and when he retires, he will have enough money to live off of for the rest of his life.
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I just read a tweet about how Patrick Ewing said that Joel Embiid could very well be the most talented Center in the NBA right now. Apparently that kind of talk does not happen, does not come out of Ewing’s mouth lightly.
One day we could be adding Joel Embiid to the list of Greatest!
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@Kcmatt7 Agreed i think some of the players back then were good enough to play these days but only a hand full. Its the same way in FB, kids now a days are bigger, faster and stronger than most that played in the old days. I’m thinking Wilt could’ve played in todays game just fine if he was in his prime, some of the other guys like Jerry west would get smoked IMO.
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@kjayhawks oh exactly what I’ve been trying to say. Nobody is arguing to say that Wilt wasn’t a transcendent player. He truly was. But let’s just not lie about who he played against or why his stats were so inflated.
I mean one of the things that made Wilt so good was that he did workout like a modern day athlete. He also made the money to make basketball his sole focus where a hefty majority of players could not do that. They actually had to go get other jobs during the offseason.
It was such a different time, those who lived it aren’t able to take the glasses off. That’ll probably be me talking about LeBron in 40 years…
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“But let’s just not lie about who he played against or why his stats were so inflated.” –@Kcmatt7
No one advocating for Wilt ever has to lie; that’s why its so fun to advocate for Wilt.
It is only those trying to understate his accomplishments and abilities in comparison to modern players, and trying to diminish the quality of the competition he played against and the rules (no normalized charging and traveling) that he labored under that skirt an acute Pinnochio effect.
Rock Chalk!!!
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Players back then mostly used the most advanced training methods of the day. They would be doing the same thing in this era as well. The greats from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s more than likely would succeed today as well because those guys were driven to be the best. They would still be driven to be the best if transplanted into this era as well.
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@Kcmatt7 said:
Players didn’t make enough for it to actually be enticing to play basketball competitively growing up as a kid.
All of these sorts of arguments can be inverted on themselves easily and validly.
Players make so much now that they protect the merchandize and don’t play nearly as hard, so Wilt would completely whip their asses today, if he played today as hard as he did then.
As a result, IMHO, all this sorts of arguments are rather superfluous.
