The greatest
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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.
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Thanks for posting the feed about Wilt.
My take away was that block of Jabbar’s sky hook, when Wilt was way past his jumping prime.
Imagine if Wilt had played his first tens seasons coincident with Kareem.
They were both about the same size.
Wilt was of course a vastly better jumper than Kareem, as the tape of him in old age at 300+ pounds shows with him swatting Kareem’s sky hook effortlessly.
Imagine how many sky hooks of Kareem’s Wilt would have blocked, when Wilt was Kareem’s weight?
Would Kareem have even tried the sky hook on Wilt the first five years of Wilt’s career?
Next, imagine Kareem trying to guard Wilt the first five years of Wilt’s career.
Wilt could easily out maneuver Kareem and do finger roles and fadeaways on Kareem, even when Wilt was an old man lugging 300+ pounds around.
Imagine how consistently Wilt could have blown around and by Kareem, or shot the fade away, when Wilt was in his first five years.
Wilt probably could have scored 40-50 points on Kareem, or fouled him out in ten minutes, while holding Kareem to 10-15 points during Wilt’s first five seasons.
The man was an order of magnitude better than any other center that played the game…except maybe for Big Russ.
I have always thought that Big Russ would have become a great offensive player had he played on lesser teams his first five years in the league.
Big Russ was a great, great, GREAT athlete, who had the strongest will I have ever seen in a basketball player, even stronger than Wilt’s.
Just as Wilt became what his teams needed early on, and then again later on, Big Russ became what was needed by the Celts and they were so successful that he never had to develop his offensive game his entire career.
But I recall in college that he could hang numbers whenever his team needed them.
But i don’t think Big Russ could have stopped the sky hook of the great Kareem, so, I’ve got to give the edge to Wilt as the all time center.
But I do so with the GREATEST respect for pound for pound the greatest center that ever played the game–Big Russ.
But without the pound for pound, I’ve got to go with Wilt.
Kareem and Big Russ were a tie, and Kareem might have been better than Big Russ had Kareem layed off the weed he reputedly used regularly.
Bottom line these three guys were pre-charge and travel era. They were about as good statistically, in some cases better, in the pre-charge and travel era, as were the guys that came after them in the Charge and Travel Era.
Logical conclusion: Wilt, Big Russ, and Kareem were waaaaaay better than the centers that have come after them. Waaaaaaaay better.
Really, Wilt would likely have scored as many as another 5,000 career points in the charge and travel era, even with the lower number of trips in the charge and travel era. Why? Because he would have literally been unstoppable.
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Might as well listen to LB tell a Wilt Chamberlain at 43 years old story, too.
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@jaybate-1.0 Duuuuude! That was really cool.
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And did you notice how cleverly LB broke the Wilt embargo by tangent, when asked about Bird-Magic.
There appears a concerted effort to marginalize Wilt from NBA memory in the Nike-Jordan era. Nike Jordan were to huge of a money maker for the NBA and the petroshoeco-agency complex to allow the memory of Wilt get in the way.
How can you hype Mike as the greatest for Nike, if everyone remembers how much better Wilt actually was? It was never Wilt hating. It was business. They apparently HAD to bury Wilt legend to make the Mike myth work.
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I believe it is a lot simpler than that. Consider that he average 40 year old basketball commentator was not even born when Wilt retired from the NBA. The more plausible explanation is that most sports reporters never saw Wilt play and to them is a player from an older generation when the sport was young and information from that era is not easy to come by and there is no video to document some of the better performances from tha era. For example, the only documentation from the game where Wilt scored 100 points is a few press reports and a picture of him holding a sign; I am not sure there is a tape of the radio broadcast. Today, even the simplest event is captured for posterity not only by the media but also by 1000s of cell phone cameras.
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Excellent point.
As time passes, all persons of any kind in all fields fade, from subsequent generations memories…unless they are made part of what might be called instituted memory, aka official history. We remember some founders of our country, some Presidents, some generals, but not others, many generations after anyone was alive to witness them, because they are taught to us in schools by our government’s and its scholars’ and oligarchs’ preferences. And later reinforced by author’s and media in books, film, tv, and internet usually strongly subsidized by government and private oligarchs seeking to reinvigorate a certain memory intended to help rationalize a present or anticipated activity.
So it follows that passage of time, and absence of those in media having seen him play, explains the fading of Wilt’s phenomenal abilities from media coverage, just as you suggest, and the likely quite conscious decision to only partially institute and largely not teach his accomplishments; and instead institute and teach first Magic/Bird and then MJ and perhaps now Lebron, is likely driven by the marketing need to generate revenues from each succeeding generation by the most expedient means at hand–the appeal to each generation’s vanity that its athletes (and by implicit suggestion-- it) are the greatest yet; that progress is never ending and linear.
It is so much easier to sell beer by saying your star is the best there ever was, so don’t turn that dial, and bet while you can, for your greatest ever player will retire soon. Appeals to scarcity and vanity are powerful marketing tools in the hands of someone aiming the media spotlight.
Making persons think this is the greatest player at the biggest moment in sports history is “giving them thoughts that control things;” i.e., programming them how to think, so that they willingly suspend (or at least limit) reason and disbelief, and so watch, buy and bet on the “greatest show on earth” ever! That’s entertainment! That is the Essense of Carney showmanship, augmented by advertising, propaganda, and when necessary, a psy-op.
In a big moment, you never want them thinking about anything other than the spectacle at hand, unless that thinking makes the spectacle seem even bigger and makes them want to watch, buy and bet more.
You’ve got to make’em think of Mike, not Wilt. Lebron not Wilt.
Wilt was waaaaaay better. That won’t make a 20 year old today watch, buy and bet!
And now you’ve got to glorify Small Ball, when there is a drought of big men.
“That’s entertainment!”
So: what we are each describing separately is likely required jointly to create the phenomenon we observe over the length of time we observe it in the case of basketball and Wilt.
Rock Chalk
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Look at it this way. The Dream Team was arguably the best team ever assembled and I believe it would handle the current USA team rather handily. Now, look which players on that team are even mentioned? Only Jordan, and mostly because of the merchandising. Unfortunately we now live in a society where instant gratification and “what have you done for me lately” rule the news and admires people that are famous for being famous and utterly devoid of any talent whatsoever, like the Kardashians…unless you consider a huge rear end and a sex tape talent…
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I was remarking similarly about The Voice and America’s Got Talent.
I enjoy these two shows a lot, because they are about something other than hyper pessimism, hyper ugliness, and hyper authoritarianism resplendent in baroque-noir style holding down the mindlessly violent and ugly serfs by near torture interrogation and extraction of coerced confessions as the best we can hope for in a duly constituted republic and a nation of laws temporarily overrun by an arrogant private oligarchy drunk on the capacity of recent technology to amplify their greed and grasp over command and control.
BUT…
Then a friend sent me a feed of a kinescope of the Jimmy Durante Show–an early variety show from 1952–and I watched it in amazement, for I had forgotten how marvelous it was to be entertained by skilled, professional entertainers.
My friend suggested that sport is popular, because it is the last type of popular entertainment where technology and economics converge to still permit/require highly talented, skilled, and drilled pre-professionals and professionals be the performers.
He is a KU fan. He said imagine KU Basketball in which Bill Self, Frank Mason, Devonte, Josh, Bragg, and Landen sit in big, tech-throne chairs along the court and watch and judge the walk-ons, who are the primary performers for the team for the entire season. He said that is The Voice.
It took awhile to sink in.
The point is that it is not economical to pay the professional entertainers on The Voice to perform their actual skills every night. They charge too much. The economics of the show only work if they sit there and do nothing and watch, like you and me, while amateurs looking for a big break perform for nothing, or next to nothing, and subject themselves to the debasement of being commoditized before our eyes.
I am not knocking The Voice and shows like it. I don’t blame Americans thirsting for entertainment wanting to watch amateurs sing and dance, instead of beat confessions out of scum bags and white collar criminals (aka white middle class men being image reengineered with mass media to not be such an influential, successful portion of the society and electorate). But how economically dysfunctional is it, when the American economy can no longer afford to be entertained by skilled, professional entertainers, EVEN virtually and remotely through TV?
So: it is not just that Americans are base and crazed seekers of instant gratification. That is largely the effect of a cause. The cause is that the American economy can afford to present skilled performers even virtually to the American public, given its high 22% unemployment (when accounted for with pre-1980 criteria), outsourced high paying jobs (accomplished with tax subsidy), largely failed experiment with central bank centric central planning, and largely failed experiment with deeply subsidized oligopoly market regimes, etc.
Through out American little “r” republican history, until the rise of blatantly insipid and anti-democratic neo conservative deconstruction of legacy Constitutional order and New Deal economic institutions, and the temporary, but 16 year and counting eclipse of the sovereign republic with the National Security State apparatus and its FEMA COG shadow government (and no doubt with the interference of central bank centric interests from states outside the USA) that appears to be badly bungling the staging of this Presidential election, well, through out that long little “r” republican history, America arts and letters and popular entertainment grew to become some of the most wildly popular and beloved art forms and entertainment products in the world.
The American popular song came to dominate popular music in the 20th Century. Dixieland, ragtime, jazz, blues, country, even American classical music blossomed BEFORE the great baroque-noir era of increasingly unaffordable entertainment by skilled professional entertainers.
The American popular movie came to dominate popular cinema in the 20th Century. Shorts. Silent films. Talkies. Epics. Americans produced some of the best of all of these types of entertainment and found ways to make them affordable enough to pay skilled professionals to act in them and found movies chains, separated from production companies by anti-trust enforcement, capable of not gouging so much for distribution that Americans actually got to see great skilled professional performers at least on the screen.
Radio the same.
Television the same.
Music the same.
The republic operating constitutionally under rule of law found ways to afford to entertain citizens with skilled professional performers. Self entertainment stayed on the porch swing, where it belonged. Amateur entertainment stayed in small venues like regional theater, and mellerdrammers.
Its not that the old republic did not have casualties of modernization. Vaudeville, which developed many of the skilled professional entertainers of the old republic of the 20th Century could not compete with the outlets of movies, radio and television. The fabulous territorial big bands that lived in KC and toured the southwestern US playing in gin joints that sold Pendergast booze disappeared with the end of prohibition, the end of the Depression, and the mass urbanization after WWII. But the ascendent, replacement outlets (portals if you will) for entertainment could still afford to use skilled professional performers.
It is almost unbelievable that we have now at least two generations of young Americans that know only reality TV and amateur TV; that have never been consistently entertained by skilled professionals. We are literally being entertained in national, regional and even global audiences now by persons that wouldn’t even have been allowed on a vaudeville stage, wouldn’t even have been allowed on Howdy Doody; wouldn’t even have been allowed on 12 Street and Vine.
It is so extraordinary that I am not really able even to take a stab at the likely effects on culture over the next several decades.
I know there are great performers out there todays, and that in fields like digital down load music, we are perhaps at an all time zenith of quantity of skilled professional performers, whether or not I still listen to and like much of it. Steve’s iPod and his phone and DARPA’s internet enabled this.
But movies, television, and streaming video?
More and more they cannot afford to use skilled professional actors. More and more they have to use walk ons and special effects, and locations without artifice to try to crank the shit out on a budget that makes ends meet.
I know the very top of the entertainment biz is more flush than ever before, because of the globalization of markets, coupled with the balkanizing of 2000 channels. and growing.
But look for a musical that is more than Meryl Streep hoofing in Greece with a bunch of nobodies free riding off some Mediterranean scenery, or someone trying to stretch a rock video out to feature length, and you won’t find it. The economics don’t pencil. They haven’t penciled since back in the third quarter of the old 20th Century republic.
We are having a brief renaiissance of the mini serial on NetFlicks and HBO. House of Cards and Masters of Sex come to mind, but there are lots more. It is not that there is no good product out there. There may be more than there has been in a long time.
But reality TV and amateur TV used to be exceptions to the rule, rather than dominant product of the time. Ted Mack Amateur Hour, the game shows, and so on were there to fill till prime time.
Now prime time is full of them.
More and more media is reruns.
Even the original products are so formulaic and populated with the same underlying polygonal FX, that they are essentially reruns that are being seen for the first time. Tasty paradox.
One truly great irony of our time is that even the intel agencies are reputedly getting away from real false flag casualty events and starting to stage fake false flag casualty events; i.e., casualty event simulations using trained accident simulation actors given legends and that quickly disappear., or so it is reputed by some. On one level we should be grateful. Better they scare us with fake injuries than really hurting a bunch of innocent persons. But best would be if they just stopped doing false flags entirely–faked or real. Regardless, when ever someone on the alternate news internet takes the time to go frame by frame through one of these faked terrorist events, and one looks at the accident simulation actors, they really don’t look all that skilled and professional. We are not talking Betty Davis playing persons that have just supposedly had their limbs blown off. They look more like they have been doing it a few years part time and are just going through the motions so the intel cameramen can get their shots and feed them to mainstream media, or so it is reputed to be done. I don’t know. I don’t have any first hand knowledge of this sort of thing. I am just struck by the irony and emblematic aspects of the reputed activity in the age of hyper realism and post skilled professional actor entertainment.
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@jaybate-1.0 you have made no valid points. Your traveling and charging “theory” has no validity as there is absolutely nothing to prove that to be true and there are absolutely ZERO numbers to support it.
Superfluous… When someone can give 10 reasons why Wilt wouldn’t do what he did in the 60s in todays game (I do still think he would average in the very high 20s ppg and about 15 rebounds a game) somehow none of those matter. Except for the one thing you have brought up which again, has not been substantiated in the slightest, “traveling and charging.” I mean quality and size of players is 10x a better argument than “in my opinion it is easier to score when you can travel and charge because when I was a little boy in gym class it was easier to score when we did that.” Absolutely awful points you have made for your case. And I expect better from you…
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@Kcmatt7 I have made valid points. My traveling and charging (and traveling some more) “logic” has validity as there is absolutely nothing to prove that it is invalid and there are absolutely ZERO numbers to support that it is invalid.
ILLOGICAL… When someone implies that one would score less being able to charge and travel at will than one would score not being able to charge and travel at will (I do still think he would average in the very high 60s ppg and about 30 rebounds a game under today’s rules and against todays small ball teams and that his team today would hurry the ball up the court every trip to get him as many FGAs as possible against 6-9 post men) logic does not appear to matter to such a board rat. Except for the one illogical thing you have brought up which again, you cannot justify, “scoring less when being allowed to charge and travel, and scoring more when not being able to charge and travel.” I mean quality and size of players is NOT ONLY NOT a 10x a better argument than “in my opinion it is easier to score when you can charge and travel than when you cannot despite when you were a little boy in gym class it was hard for you to score whether you did or not charge or travel .” Absolutely awful points you have made for your case. And I expect better from you…
(Note to @Kcmatt7 : I have tried to respond above in form, words, and punctuation as much like your own as possible, to make it as easy for you to understand, as possible. Its not my style. But if it will help you understand my point, then I am only too happy to do it. I guess you could call it playing “take what you give me.” )
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I just don’t know how you can say and speclate that Wilt would be nothing more than a middling top 50 NBA player? I just can’t understand that. Well to each his own.
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@jaybate-1.0 AWWW TINKS JAYBEE. IMA SO DUMM DAT I KAN UNLY REED AND COMMPREHIND IF SUM’N RITES HOW EYES DUZ.
JB’s argument:
- Wilt would score and rebound more in today’s NBA .
JB’s premises behind said argument:
- Wilt scored 50 ppg game in a season.
- Traveling and charging make it much easier to score.
- Today’s “small ball players” are midgets that Wilt would dominate.
- Wilt would score more than 50 ppg.
The thing I am not comprehending is how you are getting to your conclusion based off of your “logic.” (Usually someone has support when they consider something “logic”). The league as a whole last season has scoring down 13.5% from when Wilt set the record. And in fact, it was up last year to one of the highest it has ever been in decades. Would that not dictate it being more difficult to score points in today’s game? Because, to me, it would seem logical to think that if teams are scoring less points than they were in the 60s, even while charging at each other like bulls and never dribbling (do you even watch the NBA anymore? Just not true at all), that players would actually score less points. Less points per team = Less points scored by players. I mean just basic math right? Maybe I am crazy for thinking that. But it seems logical to me.
It is also very logical to think that Wilt wouldn’t score as much, even in todays midget game, because we have a very good sample size of him playing against shorter and lighter midgets than those in todays game. So, it would be logical to assume that he surely wouldn’t be able to score more against midgets (even those midgets are larger than who he played in the 60s. Significantly larger) now than he did then.
Other sound logic: The best athletes didn’t play basketball. It wasn’t enticing enough. Money wasn’t good enough. An entire black generation wasn’t recruited to play CBB and so they weren’t in the NBA either. Less people in the world played basketball. Youth programs were not near as intense or common then as they are today. The training gap due to players not making enough money for basketball to be there only full-time job (except for the super stars) allowed for the best players to stay on top.
Then you have the simple math. Wilt wouldn’t play 48 mpg in today’s world. Less minutes=Less points. Also very simple math.
And finally, you call the assumption of “traveling and charging” to be a logical argument. Except that shooting percentages are relatively close to the same they were in the 1960s. Therefore, despite being able to trample your opponent and pivot until your heart desires, there has been another formal or informal rule change that offsets that. Probably physicality in the post. Or rather, being allowed to bump the man with the ball while shooting. Something that wasn’t allowed in 1960s games. If he was touched at all while shooting, he shot free throws. So guys couldn’t guard him anywhere near as aggressively as they could have today. If you factor that with the extended MPG that starting players in that era got, they played even less defense because of the potential for fouling out. The shooting percentages alone completely debunk your argument for “nonstop charging and traveling.”
So again, please tell me how Wilt could average 60 a night in today’s game. Because, sweetheart, it wouldn’t have happened. If you could use facts or figures or actually list out how your “logic” makes sense, I really would love to hear it. Because at this point, you have reverted to childish tactics due to your poor argument that is based solely on speculation.
(Note to @jaybate-1.0 :
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Just for fun. Wilt disagrees with you on him hanging and scoring in the modern game.
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@DoubleDD Never said he was a “middling top 50 nba player” I personally think he could be the best ever. It is either him, Jordan or LeBron. Those are the top 3 in my opinion. It just depends on what you rank players by. But that is a whole other argument.
Wilt has also been known to stretch the truth… I mean what is a 0 between friends
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Any time you say the “simple” this, or the “sound logic,” it appears you are struggling to run away from my basic logic. Here it is again.
If Wilt gets to charge and travel, he scores way more.
If Wilt noes not get to charge and travel, he scores way less.
That was easy.
Therefore:
If you agree that Wilt would score more being able to charge and travel like Shaq did, while doing it against small ball players of the present, then you are thinking clearly. And anyone that didn’t play a hurry up offense with Wilt today would be nuts, because he would blow another team out in the first half with almost never missing a basket on any trip.
If you insist that Wilt would score less being able to charge and travel like Shaq did, while doing it against small ball players of the present, then you are VERY confused.
Which is it?
( a late addition: I am just letting the logic work, it is NOT my opinion against yours. It is my logic against your 10 arguments. Alas, Your ten arguments aren’t invalidating, or outweighing my logic. If they were, I would be happy to acknowledge it.)
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And a
back to you, sir.
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P.S.: I’m feeling increasingly good about the robustness of my logic here.
You will shortly embrace it and feel as good as I do.
Its no fun polishing turds.
I’m not making you. You are making yourself.
