[VIDEO] Oscar Robertson Highlights - THE LEGEND IN HIS PRIME

He is certainly in the top 10 ever.

 

Yassir. Just like when you argued that Malick Badiane was a "rare" athlete who would be a top-10 pick in most years.

Get life, RD. I understand the collapse of the drachma has left your dirt farm in dire straits, but perhaps you can cross over to Turkey and become a shoeshine boy.

 

Do they have cotton gins where you live?

 

SamFish gettin killed by a rookie with 30+ posts, love it.

 

Next thing we'll hear is that Fuzzy Thurston weight 315 and that Paul Hornung ran a 4.35 Forty....

 

He's also barefoot because the rest of the greeks had to eat his shoes. So it's actuallu even worse. Imagine how good hewould if he were wearing Johnston & Murphy instead of a dried piece of dung with a leather strap around it.

 

Wow man, that's beautiful stuff! Bill Russel was a G!

 

Rockets Dynasty - how does a highlight film of Wilt Chamberlain offensively goaltending repeatedly over the Rutabaga County 4-H Club and the Temple Beth Shalom Boys Rec team help you exactly?

Answer in runic script

 

Where are all the barefoot measuring videos? Surely there must be a grainy snuff-film like video of the Willie Nauls, new york's epic 6-5 center at the time and the Dolph Schayes (another early 60's HOF big man at 6-7 190...), being tape measured barefoot.

Do this in memory of me.

 

Forget the differences in knowledge about training technique and nutrition. Just go by some raw numbers: Chamberlain was 7' 1 1/2" tall, which compares favorably with todays best centers: he was taller, for example than Dwight Howard. But he was of an older generation so he was slow, right? He ran the 100 meters in 10.7 seconds. I'm not sure where that puts him compared to today's centers. Vertical leap: he claimed that it was 48" (which would be better than Jordan's). Here is a video of him jumping from flatfoot to 40 to 42" which basically confirms his claim. Even if his vertical was not quite 48", it's still better than anyone playing today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EpVZS26BUs

As for strength, later in his career he trained some with Schwarzenegger and got his bench press over 500 lbs. That's better than Shaq's best.

By any measure in any era, Chamberlain was a beast, a physical freak. Put him in today's NBA and he would still be the best center in the game. He wouldn't score 50 a night, but the way they record assists now, he would probably average a triple double (and now that they do record blocked shots, he would probably set the standard for quadruple doubles).

 

good god what are athletes taking these days? it looks like oscar robertson was playing in glue.

 

That's the first thing that came to mind. A bigger Sam Cassell with elite feel for the game. He looked like a master in how to use picks and how to use body positioning and how to use the traffic on the court to his advantage in not only getting open but getting other guys good shots. His mid range game looks killer. Curious if he would have had the range to shoot the three or if he was just a much bigger, more skilled Rondo type player.

 

There's no way to know for certain. He was a really good shooter. Career Free Throw % was about 83% and FG% was 48.5. He also believes that you should never take a 10 foot shot if you can make it an eight foot shot, etc... He famously laments the disappearance of the mid-range game today.

I don't think of him as being at all like Rondo. I don't think there is a comparable player today, unless maybe you imagine a Jason Kidd who could shoot from anywhere inside 20 feet.

He definitely had the touch and the strength to be a good 3 point shooter, if he had had a reason to develop that kind of shot. But there's no way to know for sure. FWIW (and that's very little), his lifetime 3 point record is 2 makes in 18 attempts. Small sample, late in his career, and I have no idea what kind of shots those 18 were -- maybe end of quarter bombs from beyond mid-court? There's no way to tell.