Guys, yes if we take Jordan in his prime and put him in Wilt's days he would probably average soemthing like 40 PPG same with Hakeem or LeBron. And yes if we put Wilt Chamberlain from the 60's in today's league he wouldn't even average 30 PPG but there is a thing you guys seem to forget .. If Chamberlain was born in the 80's and played in today's league, well he would surely be a ****ing beast. Think about it, he would have been coached by amazing coaches from his youth all the way to the NBA and surrounded with the best in the business. He would have a lot of more moves and better equipement for training and many other things. In fact, with his size and athleticism he would destroy Yao, Dwight, Shaq etc.. If Jordan was born in the 30's he would be coached by what? Same with Kobe, there were no modern day technologie, the game was very different and a lot of things were not discovered back then for the basketball game. So please, before saying Wilt would be average in today's league or that Kobe would abuse .. think about everything that comes with the era.
Jordan averaged 37 one year in <i>this </i> generation....you put him back 50 years and he averages 50 easy
Forget all of that. Just consider how each player dominated his respective league. On that basis, Jordan's statistics were arguably more impressive.
You obviously didn't understand my previous post .. Jordan would not be as good as he was if he was born in the 30's that's for sure.
If you consider level of dominance to be your determining factor across eras, then Wilt is the greatest. Shaq likes to call himself the MDE, but Wilt is the real MDE. Jordan is Jordan, but Wilt was Chuck Norris; just look at the quotes and stories from all his contemporaries. If Wilt had a killer instinct, there would be no discussion as to who the greatest player of all time is.
I wrote that be4 reading your post. I see your point; its just too hard comparing players from different generations. Imo the only player that could most certainly be a stud in our generation would be Ruth. He hit 60 HRs in a time w/o the weight training (and roids of course) etc. of our generation. And its not the pitchers were pie throwers back then, they probably still threw some heat back then.
I just read "The Art of a Beautiful Game" (which is a great book), and in it the author explained why the old timers had such gaudy numbers. With regards to the absurd rebounding numbers, the author stated that the lackluster average FG% of teams (around 41% vs. 45% today) combined with the quicker pace (he estimated that there were around 24 more rebound opportunities on average per game based on the quicker pace only) created many more chances to rebound. Defenses were not as tight as they are today because of less sophisticated scouting and inferior technique (individual and team), so it was much easier for a star player to navigate through opposing defenses. That book really opened my eyes and shed some light on the mystery as to why the old timers seemed to dominate stats wise even though their games looked nowhere near as refined as Jordan's, Kobe's, or even LeBron's. There's no doubt in my mind that had LeBron played in the old days, they would have considered him a mythological beast.
I won't get into subjective feelings for dominance. And while my above guesstimates were based on what I think Jordan would have done if he magically transported into the early 60s, I recognize that is completely unrealistic and impossible to demonstrate. Instead, I'll settle for adjusting Jordan's stats by calculating z-scores which indicate what he's doing with respective to his competition. It is fairly straightforward to then transplant his numbers to another era. For this, I'll only consider players who've played at least 1000 minutes. So, for the 61-62 season, including 3 early Jordan seasons, I get: Code: [B]mpg pts reb ast FG%[/B] Wilt Chamberlain 48.5 50.4 25.7 2.4 .506 Walt Bellamy 42.3 31.6 19.0 2.7 .519 Oscar Robertson 44.3 30.8 12.5 11.4 .478 Bill Russell 45.2 18.9 23.6 4.5 .457 Jerry West 41.2 30.8 7.9 5.4 .445 [B]mpg pts reb ast FG%[/B] Jordan (86-87) 44.5 47.4 8.4 4.4 .463 Jordan (87-88) 45.2 44.6 8.8 5.7 .505 Jordan (88-89) 44.6 41.4 12.6 7.3 .513
Speaking of naive - that clearly is what you think your reading audience is if you want us to compare a fading Wilt Chamberlain in the last 3 years of his career to a Dwight Howard in his prime. Wilt averaged 18-19 rb / 36 minutes for most of his career - while playing many more minutes. Meanwhile, you are allowing Dwight to rest up by playing fewer minutes and then trying to say that he is a comparable rebounder? Give the big man his due - he would own Dwight.
Wilt still looks more dominant to me. He still scores more at a higher percentage. If you want to bring assists into it, Wilt led the league in assists basically to prove a point to his critics. That's dominance right there. I don't think Jordan could say "I will lead the league in blocks" and do it. About the size issue, players back then were measured in their bare feet, and those are the measurements we have, while they're measured in shoes (possibly very heavily padded platform shoes).
Comparable rebounder? Of course. And Wilt's rebounding with respect to the league did not really diminish with age, so I am not penalizing him for looking only at his later years. Also, premier players in the early 60s era tended to play big minutes and grab a disproportionate % of the rebounds. I think its fair to say that Dwight's rebounding stats would translate to over 25 per game in the early 60s. He's a much more prolific scorer. The rebounding edge isn't what it appears to be, just by looking at the stat sheet.
The last 3 years of his career corresponded to the years after a major knee injury in the 69-70 season when he lost a lot of mobility. I don't think that if Howard suffered a knee injury and never fully recovered that he would be rebounding at the same rate (especially with 1970 sports medicine which is flat out primitive compared to now).
Perhaps, but that's not really relevant to the point I was making. People tend to look at the crazy rebounding numbers that Wilt and Russell had and view them as these mythical gods of the hardwood. But when you actually take into account the number of rebounds available to them while they were on the floor, the rate at which they cleaned up on the boards wasn't way beyond what present day "elite rebounders" do.
Yes it is, because you took the rebounding rate numbers from the last 3 years of Wilt's career and compared them to Howard's. If they computed rebounding rate numbers for the first few years, I am sure they would be higher. Wilt didn't play much fewer minutes in the last few years. I agree that Howard would get more than 13 rpg if he played in the early 60's but I don't think he would lead the league. I think Wilt would still lead the league. Howard is an all time elite rebounder, up there with Wilt, Russell, Rodman, and Moses Malone, but I think Wilt was better.
Actually, I don't think so. Chamberlain averaged 27.2 rebounds per game in his second season. That year, NBA teams averaged 77.5 rebounds per 48 minutes played. In Dwight's second year (05-06), NBA teams averaged 40.6 rebounds per 48 minutes played. So, on average, there were 48% less rebounds available per minute in 05-06 compared to 60-61. If second-year Wilt played in 05-06, and grabbed the same rate of rebounds and played the same minutes, I'd guess he'd grab around 14.2 rebounds per game (edit: make that 17.2 rpg, see below). In Dwight's second year, he grabbed 12.5 rebounds per game in about 11 less minutes. Draw your own conclusion. EDIT I made a mistake above that I need to correct. Team minutes aren't supplied at basketball-reference, but by adding up all the individual minutes and rebounds for every player that season, I determined that an on average teams grabbed 64.1 rebounds per 48 minutes played, not 77.5. Using the same criteria as above, that means Wilt would have grabbed 17.2 rebounds per game playing 47.8 mpg in 05-06. Actually, the 72-73 Wilt Chamberlain would have grabbed 16.6 rebounds for every 47.8 minute played. And the 71-72 Wilt would have grabbed 17.3 rebounds for every 47.8 minutes played. It doesn't seem to be a huge difference.
I cannot really see how the younger posters do not seem to think Wilt would be better than most current NBA centers to the point of being the best one in the league (comparing him to the likes of Greg Oden). Yet, the man has greater set of skills than Dwight Howard could ever dream about and is far stronger than him. Though, people point to him having T-Mac like qualities, even though his teams often made deep into the playoffs in most seasons he played a full schedule of games and often carried his teams to victory. I still believe the guy would dominate the current crop of centers in the league, mainly because he played against some greatest ever in their prime or younger days (Thurmond, Kareem, Lanier, Bellamy, Unseld) and a few decent centers like Elmore Smith and Sam Lacey. I'd even say he is probably more battle tested against above average centers than say Dwight Howard or Andrew Bynum. Wilt's personal background info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life_of_Wilt_Chamberlain http://www.basketball-plays-and-tips.com/wilt-chamberlain-quotes.html http://www.quotesandpoem.com/quotes/listquotes/author/wilt-chamberlain more on the Kareem-Wilt rivalry http://www.thefreelibrary.com/FRIENDSHIP+WAS+STRAINED+OVER+TIME-a083625216 http://wiltfan.tripod.com/quotes.html
Sometimes the adage, "nobody knows how stupid you are until you open your mouth" applies to blogging as well. Trying to say Dwight Howard is even in the same conversation as Chamberlain as a basketball player is almost more than I can stand. Normally I try to stay out of these conversations because it's obvious the majority of these folks never watched the old players play. So how you can blast someone or compare these guys to a modern player is beyond me, but you sir have put me over the edge. Lets go to a more reasonable argument your Jordan-Chamberlain comparison. Just looking at the stats from 61', Chamberlain averaged 50 points a game. You know why that number is almost mind blowing, guys like Robertson and West in their hey day averaged 40% less points than he did. That's like saying Jordan's 30 point average year, that the next highest scorer in the league had 18. Think about that the next highest scoring average was 40% less than his that year. If that's not total dominance what is??? Let me tell you, when he first came into the league he was the most athletic big man anyone had ever seen. He was a giant but his athleticism was off the charts. A guy his size and he was an olympic level volleyball player as well. As he progressed he obviously got into body building that by the end of his career he was huge. The post I believe you also made comparing his rebounding stats with Howard you are also comparing Wilt's end of his career year with Howard's prime stats. His career also coincided with probably the greatest dynasty of all time the Boston Celtics. That had just a bit to do with his not winning championships at a greater rate. An example of that was the famous Havlicek steals the ball video was against the Chamberlain led 76er team that was down 1 point at the moment in game 7. He had 30 points and 32 rebounds in that game, that's a choker???? As for his not playing hard all the time, are you seriously going to judge an entire career on a one time video tape??? If Jordan doesn't retire and Hakeem doesn't get his rings (just a thought), is Hakeem still not the greatest center of his generation???? Is he still not one of the greatest centers of all time??? In 67' his Philadelphia team won a then record 68 games and is considered one of the greatest teams of all time. His 72 Laker team still holds the record 33 game winning streak. Do you really think Dwight Howard will come close to those achievements?? What made him such an awesome player was he could literally do it all, play defense, score, rebound, block shots and lead his team in assists at the center spot. A great player that was ahead of his time in many aspects. He also played in a period where the black athlete never received their due because of racism that existed throughout the country but he never appeared to let it bother him because he had a great sense of self worth. Someone wants to say Jordan was the better player, ok everyone has an opinion, but to compare him with Dwight Howard, my god just put the keyboard down please.
Ok. What's "mind-blowing" to you, isn't so for me. I'm sorry that angers you. The person I was responding to was commenting on Wilt's end of career stats. But above I discussed his early career rebounding as well. Here is one take from a a HOF player who played against Wilt Chamberlain and was known for being way too honest for his own good: Rick Barry (Confessions of a Basketball Gypsy): I'll say what most players feel, which is that Wilt is a loser .... He is terrible in big games. He knows he is going to lose and be blamed for the loss, so he dreads it, and you can see it in his eyes; and anyone who has ever played with him will agree with me, regardless of whether they would admit it publicly. When it comes down to the closing minutes of a tough game, an important game, he doesn't want the ball, he doesn't want any part of the pressure. It is at these times that greatness is determined, and Wilt doesn't have it. There is no way you can compare him to a pro like a Bill Russell or a Jerry West ... these are clutch competitors. The above quote is from Bill Simmons' Book of Basketball, and really there is a great, lengthy chapter in there comparing Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. The game you refer to is mentioned as one of Wilt's three finest moments. But Simmons' also recounts game 7's of 1968, 1969, and 1970. In '68, Wilt only attempted 2 shots after half time, kept passing the ball off to teammates, and blamed them afterwards for their cold shooting. In 1969, he banged his knee and asked out of the game with 5 minutes left, pissing off his own coach. 1970 was, of course, the famous Knicks game where Wilt was matched up against a hobbled Willis Reed and couldn't capitalize. I didn't realize I did that. What does Dwight Howard's ability or inability to win rings have to do anything I wrote? First of all, I'll compare whichever players I damn well please. Second of all, I was comparing Wilt's rebounding performance to a contemporary "elite" rebounder. I wasn't comparing them as "players" or as "competitors" or as "victims of racism".
Well, that is why he is a baketball legend. People talk about Bill Russell, but lets be real, he played on a freakin superteam. How many hall of famers? Don't go there. And as far as the inferior competition, how many DOMINANT Centers are there right now? That are actually playing(Yao does not count for the moment). 2? 3? Well there was just as many back then.....
