fatal9 wrote:For someone who was as physically dominant as Wilt relative to his peers, and as great of an offensive rebounder and finisher as Wilt was (as shown by his FG% when his teams stopped asking him for post scoring), a FG% of "only" around 50% is pretty low (combined with a TS% of under 55% and probably high TOV%). In the playoffs he's at only 52.4 TS% for his career. I don't doubt Wilt made a lot of those fadeaways, I doubt how efficient he was at making them. Just because you can show me footage of Karl Malone draining turnaround isolation jumpers from 15 feet doesn't mean he was efficient at making them...he just took a lot of them. But this is something I've stopped trying to argue with Wilt fans. I've read them say that his midrange game was comparable to a guy like KG, uh seems legit...considering he was one of the worst FT shooters in history.
Actually everyone mentioned how he could hit that jumpshot but couldn't hit a free throw. His coach actually told him to shoot hte free throw like he was shooting that jump shot, but wilt said he didn't want to bring even more attention to himself by doing that.
On film, the offense looks predictable when he gets the ball. For example, watch game 7 of the '70 finals. I've seen his fans actually use this game as a "good" game by Wilt based on boxscore numbers (even put highlights of it on youtube) but look at how bad and predictable the offense is when it runs through him in the first half. Any time Wilt posts up it was either a bad shot, him drawing a foul but missing FTs (disrupts flow of offense and doesn't make defense pay for fouling) or a turnover. He was super efficient on finishes and offensive boards though (but barely converted any post up opportunities), and it kind of shows what I've thought about Wilt...he can have a nice game "FG%" wise but not be an efficient post up player. Doesn't it make sense WHY Hannum decided to not use Wilt as a post scorer anymore but mainly as a finisher/offensive rebounder? Maybe...he wasn't that efficient when used in that type of a role. It's why we don't see him make his teams great offensively during his volume scoring years despite what his boxscore numbers say.
Look nobody has made excuses for Wilt's performance in that game 7, but using that game as some sort of indication of his overall contribution is simply inaccurate.
On top of this, combined with how teams played back then, he slowed down the offense. His Warrior teammates even complained about this, how they felt "shackled" around him. Some people might find it difficult to understand, I know I did a few years ago, but you can look like a great scorer in the boxscore but not be making much of an offensive impact at all. He looks amazing on offensive boards and as a finisher, but his post offense doesn't look as efficient as guys like Shaq, Hakeem, KAJ and the like.
Yes, it can be bad if you're shooting jump shots and you're also the primary rebounder for your team in a fast paced game. I have said a thousand times over that the reason Wilt was not successful in his early, high scoring years was because it was a fast paced game, which was not conducive to having all the scoring done by one person.
Here are two games from Wilt's prime years where every post up he made is included (not handpicked misses or makes):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oemQKScZ7MQ[/youtube].
Whoever made this video was trying to show Wilt at his worst. FIrst of all, that game 4 1967 game was immediately after the game 3 where Wilt rebounded the ball 41 times and had an unbelievable statline. After the game and for the next few days his knees were badly aching, it was in the newspapers. So you're showing us a game where his knees were hurting him and wasn't necessarily what he could do on the offensive end. Anyway, this was not Wilt in his scoring prime, so it really doesn't prove anything. and in 1964, I'll admit, Wilt looked rusty offensively. if you look at some of the other videos that were posted, however, you'd see that Wilt at his offensive best was a powerhouse. It's not for nothing that he managed to get the scoring output that he did. Most of you seem to think this happened on accident or something, it's **** bizarre. I really don't know how you guys are making this sort of argument with a straight face and getting away with it, unbelievable. Same thing with that Shaq homie in this thread, you guys all make the case, implicitly, that everything Wilt did was an accident, or if it wasn't he wasn't really doing anything of value. Again, **** bizarre.
The point isn't whether he made or missed the shots, those things vary game to game. But it's things like his awful footwork, how many dribbles he uses to make his move (this wouldn't fly in today's game where double teaming and trapping is waaay more common), his dribbles aren't fluid or in rhythm, his touch outside of 5+ feet away looks really awkward but it's pretty soft on his bank shot (though he is soo slow in getting into that move), has a bad habit of exposing the ball and he clearly doesn't have a lower base and center of gravity (long skinny legs) of a guy like Shaq to play the power game like him. These are things that are consistent on a game to game basis. But you guys can believe that a guy who was as horrible as Wilt at FTs had awesome midrange game. I just think it's a big leap of faith.
See my points made above that addressed these statements.
TL;DR: Wilt was an awesome finisher and awesome on the offensive boards but his post offense is very overrated. That combined with his historically bad FT shooting (and likely high propensity for turnovers) doesn't make him an efficient option in the post like his numbers would suggest.
If wilt had a tendency for turnovers, it wasn't when he was handling the ball. Rather, I think he had a good # of turnovers from goaltending.
Defensively, I've heard his fans compare his impact to Russell. Even at his best when he was motivated, I disagree with that strongly. He was a dominant shot blocker, a good man to man defender in the post in his later years and that's it. I've heard commentators point out how Wilt doesn't leave the paint and cover screen and rolls. Clearly doesn't have Russell's (or KG's or Hakeem's or Walton's) "horizontal" game. His defensive impact is inconsistent throughout his years. I see him defensively like I do Shaq. Great when he wants to be (though can be exploited by some weaknesses) but inconsistent effort wise. I'm pretty sure we have some data too of Wilt not improving offenses and defenses as much as you'd expect from someone with his boxscore numbers.
Saying that Wilt was comparable to Shaq defensively is much worse than saying he was comparable to Russell.
He put up 44/25 on a 31 win team in a season where he was healthy and played all games (also had two other all-star players on his team). How can you be that statistically and physically dominant and come out with such few wins? Then couple of years later, he was leading the Warriors to the worst record in the league at 11-27 in games he played, then he gets traded for peanuts, joins the Sixers who were 21-20 at the time they made the trade and finished 40-40. When Warriors made improvements next season, there are articles of Wilt's former Warrior teammates complaining about how "shackled" they were with Wilt on offense. Sixers of course became an all-time great team in a couple of years with Wilt literally being the last option on the floor scoring wise though improving other parts of his game (along with them adding guys like Billy C to the roster and guys like Chet Walker and Luke Jackson maturing).
his 1963 team sucked, they were horrible, everyone knows this and saying otherwise is revisionist history. In 1964-1965 Wilt had health issues (a heart attack), and even he knew he was playing badly and was in a funk. he was traded because frank Mileau thought he was going to be dead by the end of the year.
and as i have said a million times, 1969 was by far Wilt's worst season, for reasons due partly to him not exerting himself at all and his coach telling him to rebound and do nothing else. So that's exactly what Wilt did, which is why it was his worst season. Using this season as indicative of his overall performance is not accurate, though if one wanted to penalize him based on this poor season I couldn't blame them or argue against them.
I'd like to think a top 5 player would show a little bit more impact than that over the years. This isn't one case of finding a "gotcha" incident, this is something we see over most of his career. Then there are major concerns about his playoff performances, mentality and leadership, effectiveness and portability of his scoring, the balance in his offensive game, impact on the rest of his teammates, inconsistency of his defense over the years, and on and on. And I don't think Wilt fans on this board or other boards get it when they try to argue exclusively through boxscore stats, everyone is aware of his numbers, but where is the impact you expect? What about all his flaws? Is this someone you are comfortable building a team around? People are wrong now that they decided to look at his career in depth rather than perform a very superficial analysis based on his raw stats like they were doing before?
He did show impact, and you didn't exactly talk about that, instead you talked about the failures from your perspective. yes, these are gotcha incidents. His playoff performances were superb, lets remember that he lost a combined 5 game 7s (technically one was game 6) by 11 points. Yes, in 68/69 he was favored to win, but in 60/62/65 he wasn't, and he came close to winning. His defense was inconsistent, I'll admit, I think in 1969 all season and in 1971 regular season he didn't play defense as hard as he did before or after those moments. but that's nothing compared to Shaq, let's be serious here.
The problem is that you can't talk about his failures in his later years (where he was expected to win) and then also talk about lack of impact from his scoring, which were in a different set of years and in which he came close to winning on various occasions.
Please elabarate further on this point because first year Shaq was already being grouped into the iconic figure like MJ. He wanted all the attention, he did not shy away from it. The only point I have ever heard regarding this was young Shaq before college where his mother told him to keep his head up and walk tall, letting everyone look up to him.
. I mean, twitter, FB, Cellphones, look out. It sounds silly, right? Or the fact that he was fragile personally which also doesn't last long into today's league. So yes, Wilt would most likely be the #1 draft pick, great athletic freak, to me, much better on D than O in today's game. So now that this is out of the way can we go back to debating versus making excuses for the man?
