Wilt Chamberlain ran a 49 second 440 (about 10 feet more than the 400m) in high school and a 10.9 second 100 yard dash in college. I doubt Dwight is significantly faster than Wilt.
Don't know how Wilt got dragged into this but he would be dominant in the NBA today. He was a god athletically, very high iq, and he had a 7'8" wingspan. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to learn some history Liberon knows better though.
And his moves, those skills around the hoop. No one even sniffs close today. His long arms and one hand lay ins are killers, probably just as elegant and undefendable as the sky hook. How come no big man with those skills back around 60s to 90s? They have all the videos and coaches. I guess everybody went play like mike.
Because the game has changed. As soon as Wilt puts the ball down he will get hit with the quickest double team he's ever confronted in his life. Swings his elbow or make a spin move without looking and that's an offensive foul.
Plus Wilt is one of the only players who would make Dwight look like a good FT shooter. Imagine how people would react if Dwight Howard ever had a season where he averaged only 38% from the FT line. I get why some romanticize the past, but when it comes to sports, a lot of the time it's ridiculous.
Does Bill Russell get the benefit of playing modern AAU basketball and not learning any fundamentals as a big man because he can thunder dunk on the smaller kids? Or are we simply time traveling someone with a ludicrous hypothetical?
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That's one of the frustrating things about today's game: how meaningless the blocked shots stat has become. Bigs now just try to swat the air out of the ball; the ball winds up out of bounds, or 50% to the opponent. Russell prided himself on blocking the ball softly to his teammates. It's a lost art, like FT shooting, among bigs.
Yeah, that looks about the same quality of basketball as is played when 2 middling Euroleague teams go at it.
Bill Russell would've won maybe 3-4 rings tops. And that's if he was surrounded by a really good cast. Put Dwight in the Cavs or Golden State and he'd win 3-4 rings too. The players today are much more gifted than the players of the 50's and 60's. I would increase every modern player's stats by 5%-10% if they had played in Russell's era. Lebron would've averaged 80 points a game.
Man you guys kill me at times... Russell was a scorer in college, he changed his game in the pros for the team.. Called being a team player.... T_Man
Humans or athletes? You're not being consistent. Obviously the game has changed and the training and coaching has changed. I shudder to think if Wilt had been born in 1982....
