Watching Wilt won't improve the quality of competition he faced. Can you imagine players like Shaq, Olajuwon, or Kareem getting to beat up on the scrub competition Wilt faced for nearly his entire career? The quality of competition in the NBA back then was worse than it is currently in China or the G league....which is understandable because the NBA was in its infancy.
This thread always reminds me that Portland wouldn't have done anything more even with the addition of Melo. OKC is roughly the same in record as this point last year. So we'd still stand ahead of the blazers even with a "big 4". Foolish fools not fooling anyone.
That doesn't change the fact that he was a 7 footer with a crazy vertical, longer arms and bigger hands than Shaq, and won the high jump nationally at Kansas, you put that in the NBA today and you have the ultimate P&R threat along with the best defender in the league, the man regularly got above 20 blocks in a single game, he even blocked prime Kareem's skyhook at 36.
You put him in the NBA today, and he's in the G league learning how to play. Don't let him beating up on YMCA quality opponents fool you.
He'd be an all star from his athleticism alone, you are hilariously selling him short. Yao Ming averaged 30 a game in a shitty china league, Wilt averaged 50 in a league that even back then could smoke today's china league.
The league is very different now, he could manage the offense of DeAndre Jordan so long as there was a good enough player setting him up with lobs but given that his first priority was never fouling out and his second priority was padding his own stats, I'm not sure he'd stick on an NBA roster. He's arguably the most overrated player in the history of the league. Sure he dominated the league's infancy, but that's not as impressive as some seem to think it is. It's the same reason why if I was talking about the best hitters in baseball history I wouldn't be talking about Cap Anson. Him having 12 seasons at or above a .400 batting average might seem impressive if you ignore the quality of competition....I don't ignore such things.
Right, understood. But some of us are old fogies who somehow remembers days before the internet exploded. I even remember using rotary phones, nickles for phone booths and didn't miss party lines by all that much. Dadgum, I am old...
Fair enough. I think we just have a fundamental disagreement when it comes to the quality of the league back then. I'm not sure one of the all star teams from 1962 would win the NIT tournament if they entered it today.
No, I mean if you had the time machine option and they were the same age they were that year. People fetishize the past but the quality was objectively worse back then. Take any winning SB team from the first 10 SB's using a time machine and put them against the Cleveland Browns today and they get stomped out by 70 points or more. That's just how it is. The "murderers row" Yankees would be the worst team in baseball if they played now.
Clippers are now done, thanks to Utah. After tonight, we'll find out if the Nuggets still have a realistic chance of pushing out the Pels.
we need to give the w to okc in this next game and hope wolves and spurs win, so they can get worriers in the first round for teh lelz.
