When you get the top echelon of historical players, there’s no fair way to quantify their rank. I think the deciding factors have to include affect on the game and cultural influences. Babe Ruth will always be the number 1 baseball player to me not just because of stats, but how he changed the game, moved it from the Dead Ball Era, and affected American society through the newish medium of radio and setting standards as the first real sports celebrity in the US. There have been several serious histories written about the latter. As for Wilt, like many black athletes, he played where racism was often open and encouraged. (Interestingly, Kareem criticized him on his mild concern with civil rights and his affinity for sleeping with white women.)The lack of peers made him stand out even more than he would today and he was often called a freak in the worst connotation of the term. He was responsible for a huge number of rule changes, including widening the lane, offensive goaltending, and free throw rules—Wilt used to make free throws by starting at the top of the circle, taking off at the free throw line, and dunking. His influence on the game wasn’t Ruthian, but it was substantial. His societal impacts were less than others but he was also just one man without a shoe company and a team of publicists behind him. I rank him in the top 5 pretty easily. Of course, I’m old enough to have seen him play on TV.
That you even think someone who populates half the NBA record book is overrated indicates just how shortsighted your perception is. You do realize the competition level includes not only many other great centers (this was back when the NBA had many great centers), but also includes Russell, who Wilt outplayed pretty much every time they met. As I said above, if competition level were indeed so low, please do share the long list of other players who put up Wilt's stats. Will consider this totally refuted until such list is provided (and we both know no such list exists). Weaknesses in his game which you can't even list? What were they? Not as mentally strong as Russell? First, I'd bet money that one of the first to refute that would be Russell himself. If not as mentally strong as Russell, why/how did he outplay Russell almost every time they met? You do know who he set that 55 rebound game record against, right? (No, probably not. Hint: it was Bill Russell). You need to bring more than just broad statements. Not as mentally strong based on what??? As for as rules of the era, you seem to have forgotten they constantly changed them just to stop him. The NBA has never done that, to any other player, ever. That alone indicates he's probably the GOAT. FWIW, Wilt would CRUSH current NBA players. A much bigger stronger Giannis, 2 time MVP and reigning Finals MVP (probably not the handles, but athletically, yes). A bigger stronger LeBron, even...with a much higher vertical jump. A more athletic, faster Shaq. Wilt was probably more suited for today's game than for his era's. If Wilt were to have played in today's era, this whole conversation about who is the GOAT wouldn't even exist. it would be totally obvious who the GOAT was. Recall the story I posted above about Wilt playing pickup games against Magic's Laker team (playing with UCLA freshmen). Where he got upset at a call, and blocked every single shot that was taken the entire second half. And beat that team, again, playing with UCLA freshmen.
Only caught the end of his career. Remember his embarrassing Jabbar on a couple moves in the NBA All Star game. This was back when most games weren't even televised...part of the problem people have of remembering/comparing.
LOL, and where is Simmons based? Which team does he follow and love? Even Simmons will tell you he is horribly biased for the Celtics. The only difference between Simmons and any other Celtics homer on this is Bill wrote a book. A far more astute observer, and someone who actually played against Wilt most of his career, yet is still a Celtic, is Bill Russell. Show me where Bill Russell ever says Wilt was overrated and only cared about his stats? Contrare...he's one of Wilt's biggest supporters, because he knows just how good Wilt really was, and has a MUCH better perception of what Wilt was like, went through, etc. Russell thinks of him as more of a misunderstood giant, and all these innuendos being thrown out about him are just proof of that. Look at it this way. That Simmons even felt the need to bring it up, decades later, again really shows more just how dominant Wilt was. People still trying to tear him down, decades later.
Oh boy, looks like I'm going to have to take the time to flesh those ideas out. Well everyone has a right to thier own opinon, it's fine to have yours. Give me sometime later and I'll flesh out everything for people to see.
There are a lot of hard-to-believe stories out there about Wilt, including that last one. Wilt was a great player, and among the very top players of his era. Probably 1 or 2, depending on where you want to slot him next to Russell. We know he put up ridiculous individual numbers. We also know, from his book, that he purposely went out to put up big numbers and stuff the box score. In his early seasons, he was intentionally fed the ball to up ridiculous numbers because that attracted more interest/attention. Doesn't mean it was the right strategy for winning the most games. In his first handful of seasons when he averaged 40 something a game, his teams were middling in the standings and below average on defense. Despite the gaudy numbers, he apparently wasn't impacting winning the same way that Russell was.
To make things quicker I grabbed some old notes from past historical player projects I took part in a few years ago. I'll address your other points when I have time as well. So, first Wilt is a truly great player and deserves respect. He is top ten and rightfully so, was extremely dominant in his era and freak athlete. Having said that, imo if some want to make him the GOAT or near that, then he is overrated imo. Let's address the first point Wilt's competition vs modern players. Not just Russell but the league as a whole. If you take a top 10 all time player and put him against 60's competition he will have his dominance enhanced. For the sake of the comparison, we can do Wilt vs Hakeem. I have have Hakeem as the GOAT center and better than Wilt. I think many know that the league on average wasn't true professional athletes until the modern era. Here are some things that would aid to help skew Wilt, a top 10 player, to league averages based on the general competition he faced: Black Player Quota "The NBA had a black players quota in the 50s which was slow to fall away in the 60s: With the emergence of African-American players by the 1960s, the NBA game was stylistically being played faster and above the rim. Many of the league's great players were black. At that time, African Americans believed they were limited by an unofficial league quota of four black players per team."[17] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA OSCAR ROBERTSON (Point Guard, Cincinnati Royals/Milwaukee Bucks; 14-Time NBA All-Star; 1964 NBA MVP): I was the No. 1 draft choice in 1960. We had three black guys on the team. When they had a room report, they’d put an asterisk next to the black guys’ names. BILL RUSSELL (Center, Boston Celtics; 5-Time NBA MVP): Every single team in the NBA had three black players. And I called them out. I said, “Is there a quota or is this an accident or what?” And I get a call from the commissioner, Walter Kennedy, who said, “What are you trying to do to us?” I said, “Listen, if you catch me in a lie, you should kick me out of the league. But as long as I’m telling the truth, you can go to hell.” https://theundefeated.com/features/excerpt-basketball-a-love-story-battle-for-racial-equality/ Low Salary and Amatuer Players Many players didn't make much and worked second jobs in the summer or part time on the weekends. They were not dedicated professionals we see today and the talent would be drawn elsewhere for wages: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jun-02-sp-oldceltics2-story.html No Three Point Line for Guard Scoring Lastly, there was no three point line for guard spacing or scoring. This would have altered his scoring relative to league average as guard would have been able to score more and benefit from spacing to drive the lane. Not even mentioning the other modern rule changes that would hurt later bigs in comparision. NBA Rules History 1978-79 • The three-point field goal is tried in pre-season. 1979-80 • Three-point line established 22 feet in the corners extending to 23 feet, nine inches at the top of the key. Against Worse Competition A Player Looks Better If you have worse competition,you look great in comparision. For example Yao Ming dominated the Chinese Basketball League, he put up Wilt Chamberlain like numbers.
You can only compare players to the era they were in, or look and try to extrapolate forward. Babe Ruth, for example, probably couldn't hit today's pitchers. Does that mean he wasn't any good? No. Also, as I have said several times, if it was truly just competition, how come nobody else came even remotely close to putting up Wilt's stats then? Not even Russell. Luv me some Dream, think he is underrated as an overall player...but Wilt was better. Probably quite a bit better. Imagine a taller, faster, stronger Hakeem with a 40" vertical jump.
I'll hit your other points with time as I pull old info. Also it would be a strawman argument to say Wilt was bad, I have him as top 10 and a very special generational talent. But I have other top 10 players as better, including Hakeem. Another issue is if you are comparing players like Wilt vs Hakeem or other current NBA players and say one is better, you are already comparing different players from different eras. I say do it all the way and compare the player, team support (including coaching), competition and rules of the era. If you are only comparing in era dominance George Mikan was more dominant in his era than Wilt or Russell. You can watch film and see Mikan wasn't as skilled or athletic as those guys, so I have them over him. You also can see Hakeem was more skilled and better both offensively and defensively than Wilt in film and other aspects. Because you were the first or dominated a young league doesn't mean you were the best to ever do it imo. For Wilt's high scoring season, pace greatly helped his numbers. Also it made his team worse, it wasn't team ball that lead to winning. Eventually Wilt figured that out and shared the ball, scored much less and played more defense, like guess who? Bill Russell Pace Helped Inflate Wilt's Numbers Here is an article from Neil Paine, of 538 fame before he joined and was working at BBref: https://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/indexed0f.html?p=1423 If you adjust for pace other players scored more in modern NBA seasons. Wilt scored 50 per game at a 131 possession per game season. 1961-62 Philadelphia Warriors Roster and Stats Pace: 131.1 (1st of 9) Let's take MJ '87, Harden '19 and Kobe '06 and look at thier best scoring seasons with only 100 possessions per game, so a 30 possession handicap to Wilt. They were actually better raw PPG scorers than Wilt if given 130. Wilt's High Scoring Hurt His Team's Offense Impact Evaluation In Thinking Basketball, Wilt is the case study for Global Offense. He produced unrivaled individual scoring numbers, but they did’t move the needle much for his team. It’s only when his game shifted away from volume-scoring that his team’s offenses flourished. He’s perhaps the ultimate illustration that individual offense does not automatically equate to successful team offense. The simplest way to see this is to look at the correlations between his offensive outputs (the x-axis) and his team’s offensive efficiencies (the y-axis): There’s a massive negative correlation (-0.76) between Wilt’s scoring attempts and his team’s offensive rating. So, the less Wilt shot, the better and better his team’s offenses performed. I won’t rehash what’s outlined in detail in the book, but needless to say, Wilt’s skill set described in the scouting report contributed to this phenomenon; not creating for teammates is extremely limiting. Most volume scorers will taper down on good offenses, but Wilt is unique in that he completely shifts his style of play away from scoring on all of his successful offensive clubs. In some ways, Wilt was the original “Black Hole” – when the ball went in to him, it wasn’t coming out.3 https://backpicks.com/2017/12/04/backpicks-goat-9-wilt-chamberlain/
srs: why isn't russell compared to jordan as the de facto goat? didn't he lead his team to 11 championships? i'm only 13 so i wasn't around during my grampa's era
First answer is playoff performance, second is "it happened so long ago" He only has 2 rings and his postseason numbers (namely points) and efficiency decrease significantly. He's the teammate of the only FMVP from the losing team.... and most say the loss is because of him (Wilt)