TrueLAfan wrote:Egg Nog wrote:Manuel Calavera wrote:Jerry West probably had 10 blocks in a game at some point in his career.
That sounds extremely unlikely.
Jerry West was probably the best shot blocking guard of all time. Part of that was because he played in a time period when the three wasn’t as prevalent, and fewer blocks occur on three pointers as opposed to interior shots. And more shots were taken while West played; that helped him.
But, mainly, West has the advantage that Dwyane Wade has—absurd wingspan for his size. And it’s my opinion that West got up in the air a bit faster than Wade—partly because he was lighter, partly because he simply was able to. West’s leaping ability was pretty legendary; so was his first step. He got up in the air and he got there fast.
We have block and steal statistics for one year of Jerry West’s career--1974. He was 35 and had already played a ton of minutes (almost 36000 regular season) at the beginning of the year. He was injured and didn’t play much that year. He had 23 blocks in 967 minutes…about a block every 42 minutes. Here is a list of players over the age of 30 (not 35) that played 50 games in a season and averaged a block every 41 minutes.
[no one]
I have to think that when West was younger, he had a bunch of 100 block seasons…he might have gotten over 150 as a result of the number of shots taken in the 60s. If we assume that his shots blocked per minute dropped by 50-55% from when he was 23-27 compared to when he was 35 (and that’s conservative; Jordan’s blocked shots dropped around 70%; Dennis Johnson’s dropped more than that), we could put together a career chart with natural regression and make a passing guess at what his blocks per game/seasons might have been like.Code: Select all
Season G MP MPB MPG BLK BPG
1961 79 2797 25 35.41 112 1.42
1962 75 3087 23 41.16 134 1.79
1963 55 2163 21.5 39.33 101 1.83
1964 72 2906 20 40.36 145 2.02
1965 74 3066 21 41.43 146 1.97
1966 79 3218 25 40.73 129 1.63
1967 66 2670 28 40.45 95 1.44
1968 51 1919 33 37.63 58 1.14
1969 61 2394 32 39.25 75 1.23
1970 74 3106 37 41.97 84 1.13
1971 69 2845 39 41.23 73 1.06
1972 77 2973 40 38.61 74 0.97
1973 69 2460 41 35.65 60 0.87
1974 31 967 42 31.19 23 0.74
Career 932 36571 1309 1.40
That regression is pretty typical, and it shows that West would have been around 2 blocks a game at his peak. If a player averages 1.8 a game for around 280 games…what are the chances he’ll have a 10 block game? That’s about what we’re talking about for West,
I saw a lot of Jerry West,don't recall him being a big time shotblocker. He was,basically,the same size as Monta Ellis without quite the hops. A 6-3 G can get 5-6 blocks once in a while but getting more is VERY rare stuff.
