Wilt vs. Duncan?

[Raaccoonn]

Fatal9 you are starting to sound like the guys who claim Bob Cousey would be unable to dribble with both hands in today's NBA. Like Warspite said if Wilt was transported to the league today, he would be able to pick up on the more modern styles of the NBA in probably a year or two.

Yes because playing in the new generation means Wilt would automatically attain the best post skills and footwork in the game.

We can see this by examining Dwight Howard who has the same footwork and skill in the post that guys like Hakeem, Shaq and Kareem had.

[fatal9]

Fatal9 you are starting to sound like the guys who claim Bob Cousey would be unable to dribble with both hands in today's NBA. Like Warspite said if Wilt was transported to the league today, he would be able to pick up on the more modern styles of the NBA in probably a year or two.

First of all, almost all of my last post is critical of the way Wilt played and the impact he had in his OWN era.

Secondly, if Wilt fans really want to open the "transport him to this era" can of worms, then they better be prepared to answer a lot of questions.

Is he magically going to develop a better touch to shoot free throws and from everywhere else on the floor? Is he not going to be even more of a liability at the end of games as teams would use "hack-a-Wilt" even more? Would his FT shooting not even be MORE of a liability with no "three to make two" rule? He relied on what I believe was an inefficient go to shot, that would be even more inefficient by today's standards because offenses overall are more efficient (better skills, shooting, 3pters)? Is his defensive impact (questionable in lot of years already) not going to be reduced with better perimeter offense from 15+ feet? Will he be a liability in the pick and roll game on defense? How would his predictable offensive game work against better team defenses? How is he going to handle the more sophisticated defenses in the post? He would have to make his moves quicker and with less dribbles. In '62 the league was 70% white, had only a handful of guys weight/length wise to even consider dealing with him, clearly worse team defensive schemes, the lane was 12 feet, and you think his own era was holding down his impact? Growing up in this era is suddenly going to give him better footwork when big men growing up today aren't learning those skills? Is he going to overcome his mental flaws? Why should I give Wilt credit for "playing the right way" now, when he struggled with it for his almost entire career? For every advantage you can post of Wilt having if he was transported to this era, I can post two saying the exact opposite.

You can't shift the goal posts every time, by bringing up his stats in his own era and then not answering questions about his impact, and then bringing up certain things he would do better in this era and ignoring the many other things that he probably wouldn't. Whether it's what he did in his own era or what he would do now, Wilt doesn't measure highly for me (ie. top 10 player all-time good) in either situation.

[Brenice]

So Wilt would be ranked below dwight, bynum, hibbert etc. Do y'all understand how you sound. Hack a wilt wouldnt work np more than hack a shaq or hack a dwight.

[Dipper 13]

not in a setting where the only thing he had to do on offense was finish and focus on rebounding and defense.

http://www.backpicks.com/pre-1974-estimations

Based on this list his top defensive years were '64 & '68.

So Wilt would be ranked below dwight, bynum, hibbert etc. Do y'all understand how you sound.

Don't forget Chandler.

[fatal9]

So Wilt would be ranked below dwight, bynum, hibbert etc. Do y'all understand how you sound. Hack a wilt wouldnt work np more than hack a shaq or hack a dwight.

Who is saying Wilt would be ranked below those players? Wilt is being compared to other all-time greats (guys who are top 10 all-time good) who are much better players than those guys you listed (Shaq, Duncan, KAJ, Hakeem, KG etc), so his flaws are going to be magnified in comparison to those players. It's a relative comparison, just because Wilt wasn't as good and impactful as the best of the best doesn't mean he's some run of the mill center.

[Raaccoonn]

So Wilt would be ranked below dwight, bynum, hibbert etc. Do y'all understand how you sound. Hack a wilt wouldnt work np more than hack a shaq or hack a dwight.

Shaq was usually a 50+% ft shooter and he tended to shoot better in 4th Q / pressure situations.
Dwight is also usually around 50-60% I believe.

Wilt in the late 60's (his Prime) had a long stretch where he was consistently shooting in the 38-40% range plus he tended to shoot worse in pressure situations.
That is bad enough that hacking him would actually be a viable strategy in todays nba.

Also the idea that athletism = automatic domination is obviously false.
Dwight has a huge athletic advantage over most and he isn't utterly dominating the league offensively.

Wilt was somewhat like Iverson.
Volume / Inefficient scoring with little impact.
Maybe not quite to the same degree but you get what I am saying.

His lack of footwork/post skill (in comparison to the greats) and his relatively "stoppable" go to move would translate to this era making him a reletively weak iso post scorer.

It wasn't until Wilt focused on just rebounding/defense and only took high % shots that he actually became a valuable player and even then his big success lasted all but one year before his team declined and he forced a trade to another team.

I am sure he would be the best C in the league today but automatically assuming he would be having the same production/impact as guys like Shaq/Hakeem/Duncan had is a BIG assumption.

I don't see him being effective in the roles they played or him having close to the same impact they had.

[MacGill]

Fatal9, excellent, excellent posts.

And as many Wilt supporters do, you used articles from during that time period to back up the point you are making.

I will be very interested in reading their response's to this and I hope it can be in the same detailed, mature manner as you have demonstrated.

Well done fellow Raptor follower

[Brenice]

You cant play that way but so much. Nobody is saying wilt would average 50. But contrary to what you ate saying, dwight is dominant now. Dwight doesnt score as well as wilt. if thats the case, olajuwon wasnt dominant. He never averaged what wilt would. Wilt would not be javale mcgee

[Brenice]

You cant play that way but so much. Nobody is saying wilt would average 50. But contrary to what you ate saying, dwight is dominant now. Dwight doesnt score as well as wilt. if thats the case, olajuwon wasnt dominant. He never averaged what wilt would. Wilt would not be javale mcgee

[Doctor MJ]

Amazing posts by Fatal9.

Yup, it's guys like fatal & Regul8r that make many of the pro-Wilt arguments here so weak. Well and good to not be sold by people like me using new forms of analysis ("quants") and coming to conclusions that are (putatively) so different from what real experts thought, but when the best historians and game watchers also agree, it's not at all reasonable to be dismissive of the paradigm shift.

No one has to agree, but no, this isn't being brought on by some specific bias.

[Doctor MJ]

Re: Wilt vs these non-all-timers. My take:

1. It's really hard for me to spend much time on the "but how would we do if we transplanted him into today without any training" question. I mean, obviously all sorts of little things are better today. People aren't thinking about Wilt's shoe-disadvantage when they do this, and they should be if they really want to tackle this seriously. I'm not going to waste my time thinking about Wilt's shoe-disadvantage personally. When I compare Wilt to current players, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on stuff like that...

2. And Wilt's peak impact is clearly well beyond the guys being mentioned in the last page here...

3. However, at the same time the really alarming thing about Wilt's career is that the evidence is indicating that there was a lot of time when he was REALLY spinning his wheels, which is not something I think is happening to guys like Howard or Hibbert. I don't think it's crazy to say that in Wilt's lower moments he was having less impact than Hibbert, as long as it's clear that Hibbert's peak is not in Wilt's league.

[CBB_Fan]

Fatal9 you are starting to sound like the guys who claim Bob Cousey would be unable to dribble with both hands in today's NBA. Like Warspite said if Wilt was transported to the league today, he would be able to pick up on the more modern styles of the NBA in probably a year or two.

First of all, almost all of my last post is critical of the way Wilt played and the impact he had in his OWN era.

Secondly, if Wilt fans really want to open the "transport him to this era" can of worms, then they better be prepared to answer a lot of questions.

Is he magically going to develop a better touch to shoot free throws and from everywhere else on the floor? Is he not going to be even more of a liability at the end of games as teams would use "hack-a-Wilt" even more? Would his FT shooting not even be MORE of a liability with no "three to make two" rule? He relied on what I believe was an inefficient go to shot, that would be even more inefficient by today's standards because offenses overall are more efficient (better skills, shooting, 3pters)? Is his defensive impact (questionable in lot of years already) not going to be reduced with better perimeter offense from 15+ feet? Will he be a liability in the pick and roll game on defense? How would his predictable offensive game work against better team defenses? How is he going to handle the more sophisticated defenses in the post? He would have to make his moves quicker and with less dribbles. In '62 the league was 70% white, had only a handful of guys weight/length wise to even consider dealing with him, clearly worse team defensive schemes, the lane was 12 feet, and you think his own era was holding down his impact? Growing up in this era is suddenly going to give him better footwork when big men growing up today aren't learning those skills? Is he going to overcome his mental flaws? Why should I give Wilt credit for "playing the right way" now, when he struggled with it for his almost entire career? For every advantage you can post of Wilt having if he was transported to this era, I can post two saying the exact opposite.

You can't shift the goal posts every time, by bringing up his stats in his own era and then not answering questions about his impact, and then bringing up certain things he would do better in this era and ignoring the many other things that he probably wouldn't. Whether it's what he did in his own era or what he would do now, Wilt doesn't measure highly for me (ie. top 10 player all-time good) in either situation.

My belief is that Wilt's statistical dominance, and the lack of corresponding impact, both come down to the era that he played. I tried to explain myself, but didn't do a very good job at it. Basically, his type of scoring and playing wouldn't translate very well to the modern game, but his physical abilities would.

In the modern era, I think Wilt would have the following differences:

1. A better, more refined post-game (different moves, greater arsenal, etc.)
2. Less of a reliance on statistical dominance
3. More use of physical traits, ie length, height, athleticism

My reasoning is that Wilt didn't need a super refined post game to excel in his era. His finger rolls and fade away shots went in often enough to put up big numbers, and no one told him it would be better to do it a different way. In the modern era, he'd be raised to a different standard.

Similarly, I don't think he would put up 35/20 in the modern era. I think his impact would be more in the 25/15/2 range with good FG%, though his TS% would still suffer from bad free throw percentages. I also think that his physical skills would be more exploited now because of the way the modern game works; his speed would allow him to quickly help on defense and guard smaller opponents, while his size and strength would make it very hard for defenders to deal with him.

Of course, this is all conjecture, but I think it is reasonable that Wilt the athlete would translate well to the modern NBA and have an impact similar to Dwight Howard's, though greater in magnitude. That would make him a top 3 or top 2 player right now, not even considering the lack of quality big players in the league.

[D.Brasco]

I would take period anti-wilt press articles with a grain of salt. The press hated wilt and he had a notoriously rough relationship with them "Nobody roots for goliath".

I can find a good number of similar anti-kareem articles in the 70's as well. Wilt in the early 60's was probably about as loved by the media as kobe was in the period where shaq had just left.

[Doctor MJ]

My reasoning is that Wilt didn't need a super refined post game to excel in his era. His finger rolls and fade away shots went in often enough to put up big numbers, and no one told him it would be better to do it a different way. In the modern era, he'd be raised to a different standard.

Okay, perhaps this makes sense based on the discussion you were having, but it has to be noted:

The one thing we absolutely DO know is that Wilt's DID NOT excel in his era as a scorer. That's the problem. His scoring was so problematic it wasn't having much of a net impact at all.

We truly don't know anything else. It's not impossible that in a later era he'd have been a super-Shaq level scorer, but in his own era, you can't say, "Hey, he did what worked" because it didn't.

And as we talk about "in this era he'd be taught better" there's some truth in this, but we still have volume scorers earning max salaries without contributing even Shane Battier-level impact in today's game. Not everything's fixed.

[Doctor MJ]

I would take period anti-wilt press articles with a grain of salt. The press hated wilt and he had a notoriously rough relationship with them "Nobody roots for goliath".

I can find a good number of similar anti-kareem articles in the 70's as well. Wilt in the early 60's was probably about as loved by the media as kobe was in the period where shaq had just left.

This is why you need to take everything into consideration.

People at the time saw these minority opinions and for the most part didn't dwell on them.

Then Hannum comes along and shows that really and truely, the reliance on Wilt's scoring was the reason why a team capable of being the best offense in history was mediocre. So, circa 1967, already it didn't make sense to adopt your faith here.

Now in addition to all of that we have all sorts of data, and all of it backs up the Wilt skeptics.

This is too much for any objective person to take simply dismiss.

[penbeast0]

Don't have any objective data to back this up, but since I believe from seeing them that one reason the Wilt/Warrior offenses were not great team offenses is that they would just stall away 10 seconds off every halfcourt opportunity waiting for Wilt to walk up.

Hannum didn't only put in a different offense, he was notoriously the biggest running/conditioning freak as a coach. He believed a preseason practice where no players were throwing up from all the running and suicides was wasted. It could be (again, without data) that Wilt was just in better running shape so there may have been a lot less of the wasted stalling time as well.

I say running shape because Wilt's weightlifting was already well ahead of his day (coaches used to discourage it for fear of players becoming "musclebound"). But in terms of running, Wilt was probably in better shape for it with Hannum despite his practice of regularly holding out to miss as much of the preseason mickey mouse as he could every year.

[MacGill]

Ok, so reviewing the video footage, thank you Dipper13, I have a couple of questions and I am hoping Fatal9 jumps back in here.

I am finding a theme and the theme is that teams wanted Wilt to score for the good of the game. On page 9, when Wilt joins Philly the person doing the documentary says that they wanted Wilt to score and score lots, to attract fans. Bill Russell also makes mention to this in the Wilt 100 documentary and says the 2 of them were trying to bring popularity to the sport.

ThaRegul8tr has posted an article in which the league thought it would be good for Wilt to average 50ppg for the season and his teammates championed this to turn into a reality by ensuring he had all the touches needed.

Ok now look, I am just going to throw out something which will appear pretty silly, but maybe this is why it is hard to see his impact given the ultra high raw stats. I mean, could the league have cared about Wilt stats first, for the expansion of the game, and Wilt team impoact 2nd because of this?

I mean, what team says 'hell yeah' I'll pass up my opportunity as a professional athlete' so you can become the highest paid player in the league and get the praise?

Now, I read articles from earlier in his career questioning his impact? I mean a journalist can figure this out but not a professional nba coach? And then the swing is so extreme but the sport has caught on and growing.

I guess what I am trying to say is that as more pieces come out? The more I also think his sole purpose was to put the nba on the map, which he did of course but too many things just aren't making sense from a competitive athlete pov.

Obsessed soley about individual stats and chose this over team success at times

Why would he care so much about what people thought unless the outcome of their thoughts was 'I won't come watch you'?

Never seemed truly in luv with the sport and teammates site he never hung out with the team

Suddenly he is changed in how he is utilized because his teams aren't winning??? Was it to showcase skill or to give the fans what they wanted to see or hadn't really been seeing. His teams winning.

I don't know....just typing out loud here.

[Shot Clock]

his 1963 team sucked, they were horrible, everyone knows this and saying otherwise is revisionist history.

Wow, okay. So your premise is the typical “his teammates sucked”, “Wilt was amazing, look at his numbers” and so on, and anything else is "revisionist history".

Here is an article from 1963 which states exactly what I and other posters have written about Wilt, with his OWN teammates saying exactly what we are.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=y8 ... 35,2744031

February, 23, 1963, titled: “Wilt hurts Warriors despite high average”

Some things the article points out:

“The basketball riddle for today: how can a man score 45 points a night and still be a liability to his team?...Wilt’s lassitude is in the sameness of his pattern. He stands close to the basket for dunks or leans back for a fadeaway jump shot. Nothing else.”

To the question of Wilt having poor support (he had two all-stars on his team by the way), an NBA veteran says “if Wilt played like he does with San Francisco, the Celtics would lose too”, he has “slovenly habits which have began to eat away at the Warriors as a team.”

This is what one of Wilt’s “horrible” teammates Tom Gola had to say about his role in the offense around Wilt after he got traded mid-season:

“Some games I was never in it offensively at all. I went one whole half without getting a shot. I was always fouling out of games, or on the verge, because I was the only one laying back to pick up on defense.”

"Willie Naulls, a 20-point scorer for six seasons with New York, is now a 14 point scorer with the Warriors. Willie doesn't drive, and Wilt doesn't pass out."

So one article. Lets look at his drastic impact on Willie Naulis. Willie was a low efficiency volume scorer for NY who was falling off when he was traded. He came and spent 1 year in GS where he averaged .420 FG% and 11 points. Then he left for the promised land in Boston where he'd get to play for a real team and a real player in Russell and get back to his old form (result .417 FG% and 9.8 ppg)

Gola? He has just bounced from Philly we ha was involved to the tune of just over 12 FGA/G and got totally cut out of SFW with only 11.6 FGA/g. In NY the next year he never saw that many shots or points again.

I can find articles blasting most of the GOAT list for one thing or another. It's a piece of the puzzle but it needs to be looked at.

This is a guy who put up 35/23 in the season on league leading 51% shooting that year, and was also a defensive force according to his fans. Why are his boxscore numbers not translating to impact? Why is his team the worst in the league when he is averaging an “amazing!!” 39/24?

Is he to blame that his team couldn't shoot? His team average FG% was .403. He had 1 other teammate with a positive PER. His next 3 highest scorers shot .419, .380, .394 respectively. While shooting a combined 43.2 FGA to score a combined 43.8 points. While Wilt shot 33.6 times to score 38.9 (rudimentary I know but it shows how inefficient these guys were)

Do you hold Kobe responsible for his team's poor showing in 2006? He had 3 teammates with a positive PER and his next 3 highest scorers shot a combined .474 FG% on 28.9 attempts while Kobe was at 27.2 FGA and a .450 FG%. I think Wilt might have faired better with a little more support like Kobe had.

Why is the team he got traded to not improve record wise when he is averaging an “amazing!!” 30/23? After all, for most, the case for Wilt’s greatness hinges on his boxscore numbers does it not. Why is it translating to such little impact?

Wel he got traded to Philly from GS and immediately took the Celts to a Game 7 the first half season he was there. Philly was 34 wins the season before he joined and 55 wins the first full season he played there. So I'm not sure where you are going with this.

Okay, so another season where there is an excuse for why Wilt should be immune to criticism and isn’t improving the team as much as expected. They really seem to be starting to add up. Like I said he gets traded to a roster that was starving for a center all decade (SRS goes down, lose to same team, actually have more trouble getting out of the first round than they did previously...how can he have such little impact?).

Are you twisting things intentionally? Lose to the same team? They took the freaking Celts to Game 7 he got injured in the 4th and his idiot coach went with reserves and ended up losing a close game, getting himself run out of town in the process.

And the first round? Seriously? It took them 6 games instead of 5.

and then an article about his salary? By someone sounding bitter and has no understanding that teams bring players in to sell tickets?

[Doctor MJ]

So one article. Lets look at his drastic impact on Willie Naulis. Willie was a low efficiency volume scorer for NY who was falling off when he was traded. He came and spent 1 year in GS where he averaged .420 FG% and 11 points. Then he left for the promised land in Boston where he'd get to play for a real team and a real player in Russell and get back to his old form (result .417 FG% and 9.8 ppg)

Gola? He has just bounced from Philly we ha was involved to the tune of just over 12 FGA/G and got totally cut out of SFW with only 11.6 FGA/g. In NY the next year he never saw that many shots or points again.

You need a better quick-scan approach to looking at historical stats my friend. Go look at the per minute numbers, you'll see that both players took clear steps forward when they left the Warriors...despite the fact that they went to the 2 worst offenses in the league, and hence what should have been the two least capable of making them productive.

The fact that they happened to play less minutes when they went to the new team is of course something to be mentioned as well. If you want to make an argument based on given playing time that's one thing, but when we're talking about what happened when the guys were actually playing on the court with Wilt, the answer is that they hit their low point with Wilt.

Is he to blame that his team couldn't shoot? His team average FG% was .403. He had 1 other teammate with a positive PER. His next 3 highest scorers shot .419, .380, .394 respectively. While shooting a combined 43.2 FGA to score a combined 43.8 points. While Wilt shot 33.6 times to score 38.9 (rudimentary I know but it shows how inefficient these guys were)

This was the reasonable point to make before 1967. After all, with all the pressure Wilt was theoretically taking off his teammates, he MUST be making them more efficient than they'd otherwise be, right? Turns out no. When Wilt stopped volume scoring, his teammates' efficiency skyrocketed in one of the great year over year improvements in all of history.

Attach the blame where you want, but the result of a Wilt-as-volume-scorer system was that other scoring talent just died on the vine.

[QuantMisleads]

his 1963 team sucked, they were horrible, everyone knows this and saying otherwise is revisionist history.

Wow, okay. So your premise is the typical “his teammates sucked”, “Wilt was amazing, look at his numbers” and so on, and anything else is "revisionist history".

To be clear, only for one year.

So he’s possibly having a negative impact on the team offensively and isn’t playing defense. Now it starts to make sense how a player putting up 45/24 can be leading one of the worst teams in the league. This is an example of his greatness? When he is volume scoring the offense is predictable and he is making everyone around him worse, yet his teammates are to blame? This is from the words of someone who who played with him night after night from the time period in question and it is EXACTLY what posters (see Doctor MJ’s “price of anarchy”) write on this board.

This is a guy who is having a negative impact on every single one of his teammates and you want me to place no blame on him for why his team sucks? What good is his volume scoring if he makes the team worse on offense (or at best, having a positive impact but giving the offense a very low ceiling) while doing it? Is the point of the game to put up numbers or win games? Do you consider Adrian Dantley to be a better scorer than Larry Bird? If this is the type of offense Wilt needs to put up his “amazing” averages which apparently a reason he is the “GOAT”, then sorry, his numbers are completely meaningless to me. It’s of no meaning to me when you say Wilt “averaged 44 ppg” to whatever Duncan or KG averaged, he is NOT a better offensive player to me just because of his averages. That’s not how I see the game.

I know all about his 1963 season. His coach also started benching him (Wilt) for not playing the way he wanted. But the fact of the matter is, if you want to talk about OUTLIERS, 1963 was an outlier, with so many moving variables. You had a franchise team move to a new city, with them losing 2 out of their top 3 players and their coach Frank McGuire. Their team was clearly dysfunctional that season. Plus, again people like yourself start with the ridiculous notion that a center is hogging the ball. Does a center hog the ball, or does the ball have to be passed to him? Think on that a little more instead of posting that drivel.

But explain to me how I’m in the wrong or “revising history” on that season for seeing past the numbers, looking into details and then questioning his impact. Is it a coincidence that when most posters on this board took a deeper look into his career that they came out thinking less of him?

Not unreasonable to question his impact, but to know the impact Wilt made you have to dig very deep and look at everything. You can't look at a few variables and say "ok, he sucked" or "ok, he rocked". And people know that I won't make excuses for his bad seasons like in 1969, where he WAS a cancer to the team, but that was mostly because of his coach. And this is the part that then infuriates me. People extrapolate from this bad season or 1963 or 1965(when he was having a bad season due to health issues) and say "oh, this must mean he wasn't very good in ANY season". Yes, this must mean that there was no difference from 1969, where he was nowhere near the MVP list or on the NBA all defensive team (1969 was the first season this existed), to 1972 where he was 2nd in MVP and on the all defensive team.

And BTW, Wilt became a poor offensive player in his later years, but he hid it well by not shooting much. This was probably a direct result of never practicing. I think he got worse every year from 1964 onwards. For example, if you look at some of the videos posted on these Wilt threads and look at the period where he was very young, he was simply a reign of terror on offense. Yet if you juxtapose this to the videos we have of the 1964 finals, you see a big difference. Even by then his offensive peak had fallen a lot. Again I attribute this to his never practicing. Now was this a detriment to his team? Well in the 65 playoffs he played very well vs. Boston, and in 1966 Dipper 13 has brought up newspaper articles of what happened in those playoffs. 1967 he changed his role, and I definitely think it was for the better, especially if he wasn't going to be practicing.

Now I know what you’re going to say..."but that was Wilt’s role, he would make more impact if used differently”. But he was used differently in many types of roles in his career and he still was prone to bad habits. Wilt had a bizarre obsession with stats that dictated how he plays no matter if he is volume scoring (where he plays in a way to score as much as possible while hurting the team), whether he is an offensive hub (where he began playing in a way to pad his assist totals which again lowered the ceiling of his teams offensively), whether he is just a finisher (where he reduces his aggressiveness and has clear instances of where he stops shooting to preserve FG% ). This is not someone I’m going to give credit for playing the “right way” when he was put in all sorts of situations and ALWAYS had some kind of issues. He is fundamentally flawed in the way he approaches the game. Duncan is everything Wilt isn’t, and that’s a good thing.

I won't argue with this latter point, but we're not debating who had the better career. We're arguing who had the better talent, and was the better player. Wilt having issues with having goals is actually VASTLY overstated, everyone has **** goals, just because Wilt's was magnified by analysts doesn't mean **** frankly. For one, it shows the talent he had. But you simply cannot connect that with their having failed as a team, it's dishonest and you're trying to make a direct causal connection where it's never sound to do so. Duncan and Russell didn't have these "flaws" because THEY WEREN'T GOOD ENOUGH. But even more importantly, what did these players have that Wilt never had? A consistent coach throughout his life. And that is something that is never, ever mentioned, as if it doesn't matter somehow.

In 1964-1965 Wilt had health issues (a heart attack), and even he knew he was playing badly and was in a funk.

Fair enough, but again, you’re missing the point. This is a guy who put up 35/23 in the season on league leading 51% shooting that year, and was also a defensive force according to his fans. Why are his boxscore numbers not translating to impact? Why is his team the worst in the league when he is averaging an “amazing!!” 39/24? Why is the team he got traded to not improve record wise when he is averaging an “amazing!!” 30/23? After all, for most, the case for Wilt’s greatness hinges on his boxscore numbers does it not. Why is it translating to such little impact?

Why did you accept my point and then go on to quote his stats from that season as if it means something? More importantly however, his team did take the Celtics to 7 games and they nearly won, with Wilt scoring the last 10 points of the game for the 76ers. Same thing with game 7 in 1962, having scored the last 6 points including 2 free throws. In fact, there were many scenarios where Wilt was clutch in the last game of a series. Some of those games he lost, like in both 1962-1965.

Okay, so another season where there is an excuse for why Wilt should be immune to criticism and isn’t improving the team as much as expected. They really seem to be starting to add up. Like I said he gets traded to a roster that was starving for a center all decade (SRS goes down, lose to same team, actually have more trouble getting out of the first round than they did previously...how can he have such little impact?). If a center who is the greatest at every facet of the game according to his fans isn’t having an impact in a season his coach asked him to stop shooting, then what is his value? And blaming everything on the coach (who actually improved the Laker offense when he came in the previous year) is exactly why I find it pointless to argue with Wilt fans. You don’t want to hold him accountable for anything. Did his coach make him drop his scoring from 21 ppg on 56 TS% to 13.7 ppg on 51.8 TS% in the playoffs (and even worse in the finals)? Did his coach make him go 2/11 from the line in a game his team lost by one point and he had only 8 points? Why is Wilt the one who is having all these issues? Does this not say bad things about his portability, especially offensively? And based on Wilt's history, isn't the coach RIGHT in asking him to score less?

I won't deny it, in 1969 Wilt purposely played as bad as he possibly could. It does say a lot about Van Breda Koff that he was still playing Wilt despite this, because the failure of that season goes straight to him not clearing up his relationship with Wilt.

More importantly, you're not trying to make the point that Wilt actually sucked when he was the clear and runaway MVP for the past 3 seasons prior to that? No, you couldn't be doing that, could you?

anyway one of the points in all this is that a lot of Wilt's failures can be explained by the fact that he did not have a consistent and good coach like other players did. And it was through no fault of his own, in fact I would say he was marred for life from the moment he entered KU, where they told him that Phog Allen could no longer coach due to his age.

Saying that Wilt was comparable to Shaq defensively is much worse than saying he was comparable to Russell.

Great shot blocker and intimidating presence in the lane, bad screen and roll defender, mediocre defender outside of the paint, inconsistent effort throughout the years, outright bad defender in some years, great post defender in some years, leading average to mediocre defenses in a lot of years. Who does this sound like to you? Shaq might actually be more impressive here because his best defensive year came in a year where he was leading the league in scoring and carrying a big offensive load, not in a setting where the only thing he had to do on offense was finish and focus on rebounding and defense.

Again, don't even try comparing Shaq to Wilt defensively, the comparison isn't even close. Wilt had his seasons where he loafed on defense, but we can count those seasons: 1963, 1965 (bad health), 1969, and 1971 (not including playoffs). With Shaq you could bring up almost every season. If you want I can provide you with countless interviews done either then or sometime later of players describing Wilt as being a force on both sides of the court.

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.

Including every post up, even makes that didn’t count (like fadeaway bank after the whistle) of him in his prime is trying to make him look bad? I prefaced the video by saying that things like whether he made or missed the shot should be irrelevant because they vary. But things like footwork, rhythm, type of shots he’s getting don’t mean anything? Why is a highlight video (half of them from college against horrible competition) more indicative of his skills than actual game footage? If I wanted to make Wilt look bad, I would go to his past prime years and show how bad he looked when posting up in those years. Also, again you seem to be saying Wilt at his "offensive best" (presumably in his volume scoring years) was a "powerhouse"...hardly when you look at the big picture.

Yes, let's look at every year and assume a man doesn't age. That provides us with our "big picture", right? We look at his younger years just to see the kinds of shots he took and how he took them, ie to gauge his skill, not to say he did fantastic things against good or bad competition. Again, this leads to issues of many of you pretending that he accidentally averaged all those points, this is exactly what you're implying.

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.

Alright so I can’t criticize his later years either, because I'm critical of his earlier years? More seasons where Wilt should be immune to criticism. This makes no sense to me.

Well since you're not intelligent enough to interpret what I'm saying on your own, let me make it clear. The point is you can't point to his failure in later years and say that the same kind of criticism can apply to his younger years. It's simply dishonest and misleading.

You didn’t actually address what I wrote. This is probably going to be something where you’re going to have your opinion and I’m going to have mine, and people can believe whatever seems reasonable to them. To me Wilt has all the signs of a guy whose post scoring is not as good as his fans like to advertise. And using practice to say Wilt was actually a great FT shooter but had a mental block in games? Shaq used to say the same thing, that he was an 80% FT shooter in practice. It's easy to make these claims when no one is consistently recording anything and when you are shooting the same shot 100 consecutive times in a row and in rhythm (instead of 2 and then heading back on defense). Doesn't mean either guy was a good jumpshooter.

I never mentioned Wilt's free throw shooting at practice, you did. I was talking about how his coach wanted him to shoot that jump shot at the foul line because he shot it better than he did his foul shots. What is it about this you cannot understand? You can't just believe whatever you want if there are no statements to back it up. I will tell you what statements do exist. There are coaches and others who have said that Wilt should not have shot that shot because it took him away from the basket, where he was normally relied upon to be their rebounder. That and some people said he was off balance at times (Schayes said this in 1965).

Like I mentioned, his FG% isn't really that high when you take into account how physically dominant he was, how he was one of the GOAT finishers/offensive rebounders. And based on the fact he clearly wasn't a pure shooter, I see his fadeaway as an unreliable and erratic shot. He falls off scoring wise in the playoffs big time (would be even worse statistically in his prime if he didn't statpad in some of these series by playing 48 minutes in blowouts), which is another sign that his post game wasn't as reliable or unstoppable as his fans would like us to believe (like other guys known to underperform in playoffs because they have inefficient go to offense). On top of that he's one of the worst FT shooters in history, so I have major doubts on how nice his touch really is 10+ feet away from the basket. His own coach made him stop taking those shots in the offense and become mainly a finisher, why? why would you limit someone's post scoring if they are the greatest ever at it? would any coach ask Kareem to stop shooting his skyhook? stop Hakeem/Shaq from going to work in the post? If his post scoring is so great and dominant and Wilt can play a balanced games, why do teams play so much better when he is literally the last option on the floor for scoring (not just Philly from '66 to '67, but LA also began limiting Wilt more and more in the post in '72 when compared to '70 and '71)? Wilt just doesn't pass my BS test. Lot of things to be legitimately skeptical about.

To address the last thing you say here, I made the statement above that Wilt was actually incapable of being a high scorer after 1968 (where he did have some breakout games to prove he could still do it). I don't think he could do it after his knee surgery in particular.

Okay, this is one argument I absolutely can't stand. I’ll let the “superb playoff performer” comment go, if you really believe that then you have really low standards for what a great playoff player really is. I’ve done a year by year detailed look into his playoff years and it’s not impressive, it’s actually when I first began questioning how good Wilt really was. But to paint Wilt as "unlucky" for losing those series is to ignore his own failings and also his own "luck" which put him in those situations.

His scoring went down for reasons I have mentioned numerous times, for example that he always played 48 minutes in the regular season and that the main reason a person's scoring goes up in the playoffs is becuase they get more minutes. In addition, the pace slows down a lot and defenses get more stringent, which describes why Wilt did not score as much. But just becuase his scoring went down doesn't say anything about his rebounding/assists or his defense for that matter. For example in 1962 the Celtics were terrified by his defense, where people like Cousy and Russell were saying they had never seen Wilt play defense as hard as he did in that series. Are you taking that into account? Oh, of course you're not, because it's not a tangible #. You also don't take into account that they lost on a buzzer beater to a vastly superior team. Everyone says the only reason they made it as far as they did was because of Wilt.

In 1968, Wilt is “unlucky” for losing a series where his team blew a 3-1 lead with home court. Was he unlucky when his teammate Hal Greer poured in 40 points on 15/24 shooting in game 6 but Wilt shot 6/21 from the field in that game an 8/23 from the line (hard to imagine a worse scoring game than this) or how about his bizarre performance in game 7. is it bad luck or is it Wilt not showing up in the last two critical games of the series?

Why don't you mention game 5, Wilt's stats in game 5? Oh because it wouldn't fit your storyline. Yet the fact is that in games 5-7 his teammates averaged 30% from the field. Wilt WAS injured in this series, Russell said as much. Anyway, this season was probably Wilt's most unfortunate one of all of his years, because they should have clearly won but for whatever reason he and his team both failed.

In 1970, he fails to take advantage of an injured Willis Reed and the team plays terribly in the first half when they decide to run the offense through Wilt.

Won't deny that in Game 7 he didn't show up. But neither did West or Baylor. However, let's not forget that they did win game 6 on the back of Wilt's 45 points.

And on and on. Wilt was often "unlucky" because he himself put himself in those situations. This isn't an argument for Wilt, but one against him.

It's neither an argument for or against, it depends on the circumstances. So you've shown yourself to be an intellectual lightweight, because you said you took things season by season but in fact you're trying to find a common theme, as does everyone else. You can't take a theme and apply it to anyone's career, even Russell's.