dhsilv2 wrote:
I think calling a team with Paul Arizin and Tom Gola trash is pretty wild to start with. But we can agree to strongly disagree on 62 being his best year. Or the idea it was the greatest carry job.
You bring up pace and then the scoring gap. And lets be fair here, it was really crazy. But you yourself said it was what the coach wanted. So there's that. There's also that his team wasn't just playing in fast era but they were leading the league in pace. 6% faster than Baylor's lakers and nearly 7% faster than Bellamy's team. And of course yes Wilt played every minute possible which if you want to put on the coach is fine, but it still creates a gap that in artificial as there's no logical reason he played that much. Even then teams understood resting guys has benefits.
Just a moment on your carry job. While we never are going to hold it against Wilt if he played a bit worse against Russell for obvious reason. Red Kerr seemed to do ok against him in their playoff round that went to an elimination game.
Arizin lead off that series with a monster 43 points in game 1 to help them in a 3 point game. Game two Wilt Meschery and Arizin had 28, 26, and 24 respectfully in another win. They lost game 3 when Wilt has his first 40 point game of the playoffs. They were balanced again in game 4 but your friend Red Kerr dropped 27 and 22 to match Wilt's 29 and 20. Now to your point I'm sure. Wilt had a monster game 5 to win it, but Arizin had another nice 24 point game.
Wilt was certainly great in that series, but his teammates were far from bad and it certainly wasn't a carry job.
And lets keep the context here. We're discussing if Wilt's 100 point game is on par with a game that has a great argument as the greatest individual performance in team sports history. Meanwhile, I'd bet Wilt himself would pick 10-20 of his own games over that 100 point game. So we're not here to bad mouth Wilt, but I'm point out that I don't think that was even Wilt's best game or even his best season. And frankly, it would be sad if his best year was his 3rd season. That would honestly be a bigger knock on Wilt than anything else said here. NBA players don't peak in their 3rd year.
I mean, I would still call that team outside Wilt hot garbage. Arizin was the only other decent player on the team, and he had a PER of 15, thats league average play. Of the 10 other players on the roster, 9 of them had a PER of 11 or below. Gola was averaging 13/10 with a PER of 11.5 and a WS/48 of 0.85, that's like backup material or a really bad starter at best, and he's your 3rd best player -- and it gets much worse from there. The team had 6 guys with a PER under 10 -- under 10 is like out of the league territory, and that was *half* the roster, including the starting PG. The only other semi decent player was the backup PG, Bob McNeill, who only appeared in 21 games and played 10mpg with a PER of 14.5. Everyone else was utter trash. I mean, Guy Rodgers was starting, played 2600 minutes that season, put up 8/4/8 in 33mpg, had a PER of 9.8, a WS/48 of .038, and a TS% of 39.5%. Not FG%, TS%. Thats your starting PG. Wilt had a WS of 23 that season, the other 11 players combined had a WS of 22, and 1/3rd of that was Arizin. If taking a 22 win roster single handedly to the 2nd round, to game 7 against the eventual champs, where you lose by 2 no less -- if that isnt a carry job, I dont know what is.
I mean, people like to talk about how much Jokic carried the Nuggets and how little help he had -- and his rosters were bad -- but go compare the worst of the Nuggets rosters to the 61 Warriors outside of Jokic/Wilt, and its laughable. Wilt would have *killed* to get the kind of help Jokic had.
As far as no logical reason he played that much, I agree, but you seem to think that's his fault, and not the coach's. I dont understand how you hold that against him, and dont praise him for not being exhausted/injured constantly. His stamina/durability at 7'1 is otherworldly, and the fact he still put up all-time numbers, on both sides of the ball, while playing that much is crazy.
And again, focusing on pace that season is the wrong way to look at it -- he was 60% ahead of Bellamy, and 30% ahead of Baylor. Thats wild, and its independent of pace -- its the largest gap in NBA history. As far as his team being a few % faster than Baylor's, then why hasnt anyone else had a percentage gap like that over 2nd place ever again? Why doesnt the fastest team in the league have the highest scorer every year? Its not that simplistic.
As far as playing worse against Russell -- he averaged 40 and 29 against Russell in the RS that season, and 34 and 27 in the playoffs -- against someone that most consider the GOAT defender, and the games played at a significantly slower pace, so his numbers dropping would be expected. But if that's Wilt "falling off", that should tell you something about how great he was that year.
As far as Wilt against Kerr, Wilt averaged 37 and 26 against him that series, while Kerr averaged 17 and 16, slightly above his season avg, but mostly because he played more minutes and took more shots -- his per36 points/reb were a hair down from his season averages, while his shooting was significantly down -- he shot 37% from the field. So its not like Kerr outplayed Wilt or something by any stretch of the imagination, Wilt dominated him.
As far as bringing the conversation back to the game, sure, but you asked the question about Wilt's season. Its important to understand the context of everything that went into that season to really grasp what Wilt was dealing with. How much the load he was being asked to carry by the coach was, how insane the criticism/expectations of him were, how well he actually played on both ends, etc. Its not just about looking at 50ppg and going "wow that has to be the best season ever!" -- its about understanding the situation Wilt was in, and how well he dealt with it all given how much strain he was under. That was my point.
As far as NBA players dont peak in their 3rd year, Wilt was 25 by then. The vast majority of NBA players peak between 25-28, so Wilt was right on schedule.
As for Wilt wouldnt claim that was in his top 10-20 games, I highly doubt that. I dont know if he would claim it was his *best* game, but I think that's more about 2 factors: a) the game wasnt particularly close or meaningful and b) the amount of criticism he got immediately after the game and for years after. There's a story that Wilt himself told that his own mother called him and said he should be ashamed of himself following the game. But again, that more speaks to my point about the climate Wilt found himself -- here was this unbelievably talented player, and almost no matter what he did, he was criticized heavily. Team loses? He should have done more. Team loses at the buzzer? Why did he let someone else take the last shot. Scored 100? Too selfish, making it about himself, etc etc. Its worth noting that he even says when he got into the 80s, the Knicks did literally everything they could to try to stop him from getting to 100, and it was his teammates, not him, that were the ones feeding him to get him to 100. That should tell you what you need to know about whether the 100 was him being "selfish". But the bottom line is, being constantly criticized by people is an incredibly difficult thing to deal with mentally, and I think it warped his own sense of how he saw what he did that game. Later in life he actually embraced the accomplishment much more and had positive things to say about it. I would be very surprised if Wilt didnt think that it was in his top 10 games.
I mean, if Ohtani said he didnt think this game was the best he had ever played, would that change how it should be seen/evaluated? Im not sure that the player's own view of it should really matter that much, because theres a ton of things that go into how they feel about their own performance.
