Retro Player of the Year 1964-65 UPDATE — Bill Russell

[Djoker]

Fun Fact: The 1965 EDSF vs. Royals is the only time in WIlt's playoff career that he was outrebounded by an opposing player. In that 4-game series, Lucas grabbed 84 rebounds to Wilt's 80 rebounds.

[AEnigma]

I care about as much as I do about 2007 Garnett leading a -5.7 net rating team over his last forty games — and Garnett did not have massive health offsets. If hypothetically we push the timeline a little and those forty games occur at the beginning instead of at the end, and the Garnett gets traded to the… Wizards and looks good in the postseason, should we be committed to what we saw in that forty game stretch?

The problem with 65 Wilt is that not only was the on-court figure uninspiring, so was the on/off. If we use WOWY as a proxy since Wilt played almost the entire game, we can break down his 2 SRS lift a little further.

With Wilt: -4.97 MOV
Without Wilt (pre trade): -7.33 MOV
Without Wilt (post trade): -7.25 MOV

Now if we compare that to your last 40 games from 07 Garnett (per 48),

With Garnett: -2.92 MOV
Without Garnett: -16.11 MOV

The difference in impact is night and day.

That is not how that works. If you make Garnett’s impact per 48, you also disproportionately inflate the minutes of other lead starters.

In any case, there is no magical cutoff where suddenly we must condemn a player. Kevin Garnett missed three consecutive playoffs in his prime; what other top twenty player did that? Few even missed two in their prime, so how does that reflect on Kareem?

Oscar also missed the playoffs on some bad teams which I don't criticize as harshly because we still see some strong impact numbers. With 65 Wilt, for health reasons or otherwise, there was little impact signals. The closest example of a team being so bad even with their superstar on court would be 08 Heat and literally no one would rank Wade top 5 that season.

But there can also be significant fluctuations year to year based on variance (just look at how the Lakers did without Baylor in 1962 versus how they did without Baylor in 1965/66) or team structure (here, overlap with another centre who was being forced out of position when playing with Wilt). And when that argument really just gets us to, eh, maybe he was merely the fourth or fifth most impactful player in the regular season, for those of us who feel he is making up that difference in the postseason, it does not change much.

If postseason play really matters so much to most voters, 61/63 Wilt probably wouldn't have been ranked over Baylor.

It very obviously does. We had multiple people vote against Russell last year because his offensive numbers were down in the postseason.

The Baylor comparison is also a weird deflection. Baylor is not as good as Wilt — but Oscar much more arguably is, and in turn he finished above Wilt in 1963.

Russell

But you already said you do not expect anyone to vote Wilt ahead of Russell this year.

I don't see how a single shot makes West a better player than Russell if he wasn't already before.

This is not definitionally a best player ranking.

And just because his team won the series doesn't definitively make them a better postseason performer.

Who said it does.

Otherwise, it is no different from a ring counter saying Ray Allen saved LeBron with his one 3.

I mean, he did, but not in any particularly uncommon way. If Wilt had won this year it would be easy to point to teammate contributions as well, and no one is really holding Havlicek’s steal here against Russell.

[Narigo]

1. Bill Russell- probably peaked on defense this year

2.Jerry West- This season might arguably be his peak.
Led the Lakers to the finals without Baylor averaging 40ppg

3. Wilt Chamberlain- started off slow based on whatever injury he had at the beginning of the season but bounces back once he got traded to the Sixers. Forced the Celtics to 7 games in the playoffs.

4. Oscar Robertson- Would have ranked him 2nd or 3rd based on RS alone but his playoff performance was a bit worse than West/Wilt

5. Sam Jones

[OhayoKD]

Player of the Year
1. Bill Russell
2. Jerry West
3. Oscar Robertson
4. Wilt Chamberlain
5. Sam Jones

I feel like some people automatically give Wilt a high ranking just because his name is Wilt. This first half of the season on the Warriors is literally one of the biggest black mark for any all time great.

Maybe for folks of Skip Bayless's ilk. Otherwise, nah. Still being the best man to challenge Russ and the Celtics in a year with wildly anomalous health and off-court concerns should not be decreasing your opinion of Wilt in standard situations lol.

Wilt is getting 2nd place votes here because he demonstrated, again, if you want to win a title and you don't have a player named Bill Russell, your best bet is to have one named Wilt Chamberlain.

I feel like some people automatically give Wilt a high ranking just because his name is Wilt.

Spoiler:

“I feel like some people automatically give Russell a high ranking just because his name is Russell.”

“I feel like some people automatically give Oscar a high ranking just because his name is Oscar.”

“I feel like some people automatically give West a high ranking just because his name is West.”

“I feel like some people automatically give Pettit a high ranking just because his name is Pettit.”

“I feel like some people automatically give Mikan a high ranking just because his name is Mikan.”

“I feel like some people automatically give Kareem a high ranking just because his name is Kareem.”

“I feel like some people automatically give Bird a high ranking just because his name is Bird.”

“I feel like some people automatically give Jordan a high ranking just because his name is Jordan.”

“I feel like some people automatically give Lebron a high ranking just because his name is Lebron.”

“I feel like some people automatically give Schayes a high ranking just because his name is Schayes.”

See how productive this is?

Nice of you to crop out my very next sentence. Do I really need to explain in detail how bad it is to be leading a -5 SRS team in the middle of your prime as a GOAT level player and how we shouldn't gloss over it? Do you think nobody would crucify Jordan or LeBron for it for eternity if either led a team just as bad? Not sure what point you think you are making by listing all those names but it serves zero purpose.

The Jordan who finished 2nd in MVP voting after a third straight season of sub-.500 basketball? Yeah, I'm pretty sure nearly winning a title after a massive health scare and an unrequested trade would be considered a big feather in his GOAT argument.

Heinsohn missed 13 games this year because of a foot injury which led to his retirement aged only 30 but nobody really talks about it because Russell doesn't need excuses for lack of success.

How many people do you expect to place Wilt above Russell this year.

Not many this year but I do expect many for next year. I'm just tired of seeing 'Wilt would go #1 if he beat Russell' whenever he had a close series while ignoring the regular season and when the playoffs wasn't close. Nobody says 'West would go #1 if he beat Russell' even though he lost in close G7 too.

[/quote]
Probably because people don't think Wilt had the same help West did. You don't like ring-counting but this is pretty much the same sort of logic.

As is, Bill Russell was picked as #1 unanimously in 3 of the last 4 threads and will likely make it 4 of 5 here. You're fighting shadows. People who are voting Wilt above Oscar and West are doing so because they think he was significantly better than Oscar and West games that matter far more towards championships. Not sure why you're invoking a guy who is going to beat out Wilt in POY voting for all but one of the seasons the two played against other.

[AEnigma]

Not sure how 1968 will go, but yeah, this is not some pro-Wilt / anti-Russell collective.

[eminence]

I'm not *that* impressed by West's playoffs this year (not that it was poor either) - he/Oscar were the only two guards capable of authoring a similar one to this point, but for their expectations it seems pretty average. The series against Boston might even be into below expectations (not meaningfully) range. The PO averages look excellent/stronger than usual because he got to bumslay against the worst defense in the league for more than half of his playoff games.

[Dr Positivity]

1. Bill Russell - The Celtics had no business having their best regular season ever in the post Cousy pre Howell period, so it's easy to attribute it to Russell. I believe his impact starts sliding a bit after this year.

2. Jerry West - West desecrates the Bullets and has pretty good finals carrying team that looks pretty bad outside of LaRusso and Barnett to finals.

3. Oscar Robertson - They play like the 64 team the first half of the season getting to 34-15, but then fall off. Like other seasons I think a support cast of offense only PNR center - 60s version of Love - multiple one way shooting SG/SFs just isn't the balance you want for playoff series.

4. Wilt Chamberlain - Feels like he regresses team chemistry wise to me between drop in assists, shockingly poor start and SI article I posted earlier where he's immediately criticizing his new coach Schayes.

5. Sam Jones - His best regular season and one of the ultimate clutch guys steps up in playoffs.

Offensive player of the year

1. Oscar Robertson
2. Jerry West
3. Walt Bellamy

Defensive player of the year

1. Bill Russell
2. Nate Thurmond
3. Wilt Chamberlain

[penbeast0]

Didn't vote until now because I wasn't sure who would be my #5 guy. The top 4 are the same as always in some order:

1. Bill Russell
----------------
2. Jerry West
3. Oscar Robertson
4. Wilt
----------------------------
5. Sam Jones (he did have a career statistical year even though the team was not good offensively again, no one else seems strong enough to beat him out, and Celtics were just so much better than everyone else this year)

[LA Bird]

That is not how that works. If you make Garnett’s impact per 48, you also disproportionately inflate the minutes of other lead starters.

Don't understand what you mean here. If you have an issue with on/off adjusted per 48, ElGee's WOWY spreadsheet has 07 Garnett at similar impact (-2.3 SRS with, -15.2 SRS without).

In any case, there is no magical cutoff where suddenly we must condemn a player. Kevin Garnett missed three consecutive playoffs in his prime; what other top twenty player did that? Few even missed two in their prime, so how does that reflect on Kareem?

What is this strawman about a magical cutoff? There are two parts to my criticism of 65 Warriors Wilt:
1. Poor on (-5)
2. Poor on/off (+2)
I already directly addressed why KG/Oscar missing the playoffs was different because they were better on both of these points, particularly the second. Now you are trying to drag in Kareem when it's literally the same thing. There is more nuance to this than just 'he missed the playoffs' and you are dodging it.

But there can also be significant fluctuations year to year based on variance (just look at how the Lakers did without Baylor in 1962 versus how they did without Baylor in 1965/66) or team structure (here, overlap with another centre who was being forced out of position when playing with Wilt).

A mid-season trade is as large a sample as we are ever going to get for WOWY analysis and incorporating other WOWY years (1970) isn't exactly going to help Wilt here. Team structure most definitely can affect impact signals but I don't recall anyone complaining about Thurmond's overlap hurting team performance last year.

But you already said you do not expect anyone to vote Wilt ahead of Russell this year.

You forgot the part you quoted was about last year

This is not definitionally a best player ranking.

Yet just two lines above, you yourself treated this as a best player ranking:

The Baylor comparison is also a weird deflection. Baylor is not as good as Wilt

Who said it does.

Those who say 'Wilt would be #1 if he beat Russell'. This was literally the point of my original post...

I mean, he did, but not in any particularly uncommon way. If Wilt had won this year it would be easy to point to teammate contributions as well, and no one is really holding Havlicek’s steal here against Russell.

Guess we are just going to agree to disagree on our approach then. I don't think Allen saved LeBron or Havlicek saved Russell at all.

[eminence]

Haven’t followed closely enough to say if I’m coming down on a particular side here - but there’s enough of a historical aspect to a POY vote to allow single shots to sway me.

Kawhi is a more important part of 2019 because that shot over Embiid fell, if West/Lakers had ever gotten it done it’d be remembered similarly for specifically that reason.

[AEnigma]

That is not how that works. If you make Garnett’s impact per 48, you also disproportionately inflate the minutes of other lead starters.

Don't understand what you mean here. If you have an issue with on/off adjusted per 48, ElGee's WOWY spreadsheet has 07 Garnett at similar impact (-2.3 SRS with, -15.2 SRS without).

I specifically highlighted that bad forty game stretch. Did he have more effect than Wilt? Sure, but you started this by targeting the half-season -5 SRS.

In any case, there is no magical cutoff where suddenly we must condemn a player. Kevin Garnett missed three consecutive playoffs in his prime; what other top twenty player did that? Few even missed two in their prime, so how does that reflect on Kareem?

What is this strawman about a magical cutoff? There are two parts to my criticism of 65 Warriors Wilt:
1. Poor on (-5)
2. Poor on/off (+2)
I already directly addressed why KG/Oscar missing the playoffs was different because they were better on both of these points, particularly the second. Now you are trying to drag in Kareem when it's literally the same thing. There is more nuance to this than just 'he missed the playoffs' and you are dodging it.

I am not dodging it, I am saying they are arbitrary cutoffs. If you want to follow a hard year to year rule about WOWY, have at it — but if you did, I would probably be seeing Baylor on your ballot because the Lakers collectively went 6-11 without him.

But there can also be significant fluctuations year to year based on variance (just look at how the Lakers did without Baylor in 1962 versus how they did without Baylor in 1965/66) or team structure (here, overlap with another centre who was being forced out of position when playing with Wilt).

A mid-season trade is as large a sample as we are ever going to get for WOWY analysis and incorporating other WOWY years (1970) isn't exactly going to help Wilt here.

Team structure most definitely can affect impact signals but I don't recall anyone complaining about Thurmond's overlap hurting team performance last year.

Do you think overlap was not a potential limiter last year?

But you already said you do not expect anyone to vote Wilt ahead of Russell this year.

You forgot the part you quoted was about last year

Sorry, I mistakenly assumed that your voting post for 1965 was trying to say something about 1965. Silly me.

If you wanted to argue against 1964 Wilt voters, you should have done so last thread.

This is not definitionally a best player ranking.

Yet just two lines above, you yourself treated this as a best player ranking:

The Baylor comparison is also a weird deflection. Baylor is not as good as Wilt

Hence “definitionally”. If people want to coldly vote for the “best” players by their own assessments, they can do so. If people want to coldly vote for the “most successful” players by their own assessments, they can do so. If they want to mix those approaches, they can do so.

Getting tired of this mock confusion over how postseason success is a more relevant point of distinction at the top than when applied to lesser stars like Elgin Baylor or Isiah Thomas or Ben Wallace or Jayson Tatum.

Who said it does.

Those who say 'Wilt would be #1 if he beat Russell'. This was literally the point of my original post...

“This is not definitionally a best player ranking.”

[LA Bird]

I specifically highlighted that bad forty game stretch. Did he have more effect than Wilt? Sure, but you started this by targeting the half-season -5 SRS.

I started this by also targeting the lack of lift, a point which you have been dodging from the beginning exactly like I said. Let me highlight it from my original post in case you missed it:

had fairly mediocre impact signals (2 SRS lift on both Warriors and Sixers with Greer+Costello)

I am not dodging it, I am saying they are arbitrary cutoffs.

You keep saying arbitrary cutoff like it's close and I am nitpicking minute differences. -7 OFF, -5 ON is not -15 OFF, -2 ON. It's called false equivalency.

If you want to follow a hard year to year rule about WOWY, have at it — but if you did, I would probably be seeing Baylor on your ballot because the Lakers went 1-5 without him.

Yes, Baylor's 6 game WOWY sample is just like Wilt's two 40 game WOWY samples. Good argument.

We are voting on Player of the Year not Player of 5 Years. Wilt being ahead of West and Oscar for careers is fairly consensus. The question in this thread is how good he was in a down year like 1965 and those graphs of 5 year WOWY does nothing to show that. You know what does? The 1 year WOWY I mentioned in my very first post.

Do you think overlap was not a potential limiter last year?

I don't think the positional overlap is any more of an issue this year than last so blaming it for the decline in this season only is a cop out.

Sorry, I mistakenly assumed that your voting post for 1965 was trying to say something about 1965. Silly me.

If you wanted to argue against 1964 Wilt voters, you should have done so last thread.

There was no mistaken assumption on your end in your first reply. You knew what year I was talking about:

… What exactly did Oscar and West do last year?

You just forgot the year as the argument went on. And instead of owning up to a minor mistake and moving on with the actual debate, you decided to flip it as if it's my mistake. No thanks.

Hence “definitionally”. If people want to coldly vote for the “best” players by their own assessments, they can do so. If people want to coldly vote for the “most successful” players by their own assessments, they can do so. If they want to mix those approaches, they can do so.

People having the freedom to "definitionally" do whatever they want is not the point. But this discussion has clearly run it's course so I am just going to sit this out and wait for the next one.

[AEnigma]

I specifically highlighted that bad forty game stretch. Did he have more effect than Wilt? Sure, but you started this by targeting the half-season -5 SRS.

I started this by also targeting the lack of lift, a point which you have been dodging from the beginning exactly like I said. Let me highlight it from my original post in case you missed it:

had fairly mediocre impact signals (2 SRS lift on both Warriors and Sixers with Greer+Costello)

I am not dodging it, I am saying they are arbitrary cutoffs.

You keep saying arbitrary cutoff like it's close and I am nitpicking minute differences. -7 OFF, -5 ON is not -15 OFF, -2 ON. It's called false equivalency.

No, it is called you not paying attention to what I am saying. That relative lack of lift across the regular season is not inherently meaningful, yet you are picking and choosing at what point you decide it does have meaning. There is no principled stance here.

If you want to follow a hard year to year rule about WOWY, have at it — but if you did, I would probably be seeing Baylor on your ballot because the Lakers went 1-5 without him.

Yes, Baylor's 6 game WOWY sample is just like Wilt's two 40 game WOWY samples. Good argument.

Like I said, arbitrary cutoffs.

We are voting on Player of the Year not Player of 5 Years. Wilt being ahead of West and Oscar for careers is fairly consensus. The question in this thread is how good he was in a down year like 1965 and those graphs of 5 year WOWY does nothing to show that. You know what does? The 1 year WOWY I mentioned in my very first post.

That just brings us back to you picking and choosing what samples matter. Noise exists even in forty game samples, and no one here is entering each year with a blank slate.

Do you think overlap was not a potential limiter last year?

I don't think the positional overlap is any more of an issue this year than last so blaming it for the decline in this season only is a cop out.

Who blamed it on this season only? It was relevant in both — but last season Thurmond played a thousand fewer minutes. If he only played as many as he had last year, Wilt’s “off” would look quite a bit better.

Sorry, I mistakenly assumed that your voting post for 1965 was trying to say something about 1965. Silly me.

If you wanted to argue against 1964 Wilt voters, you should have done so last thread.

There was no mistaken assumption on your end in your first reply. You knew what year I was talking about:

… What exactly did Oscar and West do last year?

You just forgot the year as the argument went on. And instead of owning up to a minor mistake and moving on with the actual debate, you decided to flip it as if it's my mistake. No thanks.

I did not forget the year, I was trying to handhold you through what should have been obvious from the start: you are arguing about nothing. At this point either you cannot realise that, or you just on principle refuse to back down from this misplaced strawman rant. No one is voting for Wilt over Russell this year, and no one who voted for Wilt over Russell last year is even voting Wilt second this year. If all you care about is Russell, then the entire comparison and objection is irrelevant to this thread, and if you care about Wilt’s comparison with West and Oscar, then there is zero reason to bring up playoff success. These cheap “gotcha” attempts only work if you have an actual target, rather than some hypothetical entity who voted Wilt last year because of his regular season and then voted Wilt this year because of his postseason.

Hence “definitionally”. If people want to coldly vote for the “best” players by their own assessments, they can do so. If people want to coldly vote for the “most successful” players by their own assessments, they can do so. If they want to mix those approaches, they can do so.

People having the freedom to "definitionally" do whatever they want is not the point. But this discussion has clearly run it's course so I am just going to sit this out and wait for the next one.

No, the point is apparently you being bitter that people have standards of assessment distinct from your own.

[O_6]

The word “transcendent” gets thrown around, but it only means something if it’s true.

Bill Russell was transcendent. Directly in the face of a mythological creature like Wilt. Russell is was both the best athlete and smartest athlete in his sport at the time. He literally was the first and last player/coach to win a title in American sports history? Correct me if I’m wrong on that. While being a beast player at the same time.

Wish we had more TV highlights of Bill.

18/25/6 on 70% shooting and best defense ever in the Finals. Hilarious. This wasn’t the best Lakers team but I think this version of Bill might be the best player ever.

[eminence]

The word “transcendent” gets thrown around, but it only means something if it’s true.

Bill Russell was transcendent. Directly in the face of a mythological creature like Wilt. Russell is was both the best athlete and smartest athlete in his sport at the time. He literally was the first and last player/coach to win a title in American sports history? Correct me if I’m wrong on that. While being a beast player at the same time.

Wish we had more TV highlights of Bill.

18/25/6 on 70% shooting and best defense ever in the Finals. Hilarious. This wasn’t the best Lakers team but I think this version of Bill might be the best player ever.

Buddy Jeannette is the only other winning player/coach in NBA history with the '48 BAA title for the Bullets (2nd Team All-BAA at the time). Bobby McDermott has the '44/'45/'47 NBL titles with the Pistons x2/Gears x1. (MVP in '44/'45, 1st Team All-NBL in '47)

It was reasonably common in baseball in the first half of the century.

But Russell is the only one I know of after 1950, though I don't follow the other major sports much.

[ardee]

PoY

1. Bill Russell: This is easily his peak imo. Age 30, Celtics were almost as good defensively as the prior year, but his offense was way better. I didn't realize he actually shot 70% in the Finals until I read it in this thread (shows how this board keeps teaching me new things after a decade). He was outplayed by Wilt in their matchup, yes, but from start to finish, this season belonged to Bill Russell.

The Celtics actually did have the most wins in NBA history so far this year, and could easily have had 65+, given they started the year 41-7 and then seemingly slacked off a bit.

2. Jerry West: Some say this is his peak, I think he was better the very next year tbh, but it certainly has a case. Either way, he was amazing with Baylor injured. If I'm not mistaken, his 46.3 ppg against the Bullets is still the highest ppg average for a series.

3. Wilt Chamberlain: This year gets a bit underrated. Yes, the Warriors weren't good to start with, but people misunderstand what happened when he went to the Sixers and say there was "only" a 2 SRS jump. Well, after he landed there, they went 11-3 in the first 14 games (better than the Celtics prorated over the whole season), but then Greer, Costello and Jackson all promptly got injured and Wilt still kept them at .500. Those were three starters gone, can't blame the reduced team results on Wilt. There are also rumors he had heart problems this year (which admittedly we don't have full details about). Either way, he was a monster in the Playoffs and completely dominated Russell in their head-to-head.

4. Oscar Robertson: Kind of the default pick at 4. Great RS, it's notable that the Royals started at 30-13 before tailing off and finishing the season 18-19. Anyone know what happened there?

5. Sam Jones: As others have, it makes sense to reward a second player from such a historically dominant team.

[Ferulci]

This is a crazy Wilt year, his passing regressed and he went 10-28 in his first 38 games including a 11 game losing streak with him in the lineup (barely sure how that's possible) and then lost G7 by 1 point to the Celtics after which he would've just needed to be at Baylor less Lakers team in the finals. He also had an SI article come out in the middle of the Celtics series where he threw the owners and his coach under the bus.

Spoiler:

Oh, man, this is going to be better than psychiatry. In the first place, I am much too big to get comfortable on that crazy couch. In the second place, I am all fired up about speaking for myself this one time and have it come out the way I said it. I have a sort of special, savage reason for all this: there are a lot of people out there who will be surprised that I can write, because they are usually astounded that I can even talk.

I know this is true, because I get the old routine all the time. I stopped getting angry about it years and years ago, but it still drives all my friends crazy. Whenever we're standing around together—man, I mean any place—crowds of people come up and just stare at us. Then someone will nudge one of my pals slightly and say, "Hey, who duh big guy?" or, "So that's old Wilt the Stilt, huh? How tall is he, really?" they say. And then, "Will you ask him can I have his autograph for my kid?" And then my friends sort of sidle away from me—they want to stand clear to show everybody I'm not on a leash or anything like that—and they say. "Come on. Wilt can talk, you know. He's a real human, man. How come you don't ask him yourself?" Then, once they get over that hurdle, people are always a little disappointed I don't say, "duuuhhhhhh." And that, in part, is what this story is all about. This is life inside a giant, baby. I know that how I feel is not too important.

All right. What is important is what has happened to make me feel the way I do and all of the psychological hammering and tugging and pulling that got me into this frame of mind. This is more than life inside a giant. This is the story of my life inside professional basketball—the greatest game ever played, a game that suffers from being bush when it doesn't want to be bush, a game that may always be bush unless some basic changes are made. And when we get to the end of this chapter, the part where they say, "Tune in next week," or the end of the story, where they say, "Can this poor monster from Philadelphia really find happiness?" You'll know just how it feels to be Goliath. How it feels to be seven feet and 1.06 inches tall with no place to hide. After all, you remember in the Old Testament that David had all the best of it, right? Nobody even thought to say or even ask how Goliath must have felt just sort of standing around there. Goliath didn't get any of the good lines, you know?

The timing of my story is important for three reasons.

Reason No. 1: I'm at the top of this game and I'm thinking of retiring. I will be perfectly honest and say I'm thinking of not retiring, too. But I have now racked up all the all-time scoring and playing records—all the ones that count—and what else is there? Final standings at the end of this season: Chamberlain leads the scoring, with 2,534 points, for the sixth year in a row. Chamberlain shoots 2,081 and hits 1,063 for a .510 average. or 34.7 points a game. And that's in 73 games: I didn't play them all. See what I mean? Man, I have fulfilled everything I wanted in pro basket-ball except winning the NBA title. And I can't do that all by myself, right?

Money has nothing to do with the way I feel. I have been investing my money under smart counseling for years. And even though my accountant, Alan Levitt, calls me every single day from Philadelphia and says something like "Run for the hills, baby, we're broke." It is still not critical.

I also have a sore stomach. Because of my size it is more sore stomach than you ever heard of. My doctor, Stanley Lorber, is considered the best internist in Philadelphia, and he can't find out what's wrong with it. But he gets a real kick out of examining me, and he uses me as a subject for lecturing his students. I think pretty soon I am going to start charging him. Ike Richman, part owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, feels so bad about my stomachache that he got real desperate last week and said. "I know. Let's go to a hypnotist." Man, a hypnotist—who, me? I thought I'd put Ike off, so I said. "Man, how much will you pay me to go and get hypnotized? A hundred dollars an hour?" And Ike said he'd do it. Anything to get me feeling back in shape. That's the kind of guy he is. But no matter what we do it keeps getting worse instead of better, and my health is going to figure big in my future. This is my summer of decision.

Reason No. 2: I'm thinking of doing a lot of things other than playing basketball. I am thinking of living my own life, for one thing. I could take life easier and manage my apartment house properties and my nightclub in Harlem and the six corporations I'm tied up in—and be a business executive in a size-IS collar, button-down oxford-cloth shin and the biggest hotdamn gray flannel suit you ever saw in your whole life. I have all kinds of other offers, including a role in a civil rights movie based on the new book Look Away. I could go into boxing. And don't think for a minute I couldn't be heavyweight champion of the world. You hear me out there. Sonny Liston? You don't believe me? Look at that picture on the cover again, baby. I am also considering—but not too seriously—standing offers to enter professional baseball or football. But we've got to face it. I would fall with one hell of a crash on a football kid (even though it might take more than one guy to bring me down). And while I might be hot stuff catching high ones in the outfield, even the wildest pitcher in baseball would murder me at home plate because I have got such a big strike zone.

Reason No. 3: Finally. I am tired of being a villain. It is not the role I had in mind when I entered this sport. I don't feel like a villain, and I don't think like a villain. And there are girls out there who insist I don't exactly look mean, either, you know? Never mind the mustache and beard, man. My mother thinks it looks awful, but the overall vote is in favor of it. And I think I have spotted a trend away from that sort of thing. Villainy, I mean. In the old-time days there was no sympathy for the big guys. Remember Bluto, the big, fat one in the Popeye cartoons? And he would always grab old Olive Oyl and run off with her, and Popeye would eat all that crazy (ugh) spinach and then kick the hell out of Bluto? Well, Bluto is pretty much out of it now. And take the case of Frankenstein's monster. He used to be a real heller and now even he has been gentled up on TV.

Then, finally, there is a new kindly hero: the Jolly Green Giant. It's a trend, you see? Now, I don't exactly see myself as the Jolly Bronze Giant—I don't dig that leafy little costume, for one thing—but you get the theme. Boy, I don't know. How does a guy get to be a villain in the first place? Not all at once. I promise you. It is a cumulative series of little things—like little jabs from sportswriters—that have a way of adding up over the years to make the total picture of a bad guy. They have a way of slowly filling in an image that seems to stick in people's minds. I don't know of any athlete in the world who has had to prove himself so many times. Over and over again, fighting off the image. give you an example: "That Wilt. He just stands there and dunks the ball," says one writer. So I work hard and perfect a jump shot. "That Wilt. He shouldn't fade away from the basket when he's shooting the jumper." they say. So I try some other shots. And I concentrate on defense. "That Wilt," they say this time. "He just plays one end of the court."

So I dash around and hustle down to the other end of the court. "He's hogging all the action." So I try more team play, and I feed the ball off like mad. "That Wilt," they say, fresh out of criticism. "He's a fink." Man, how can I win? Look: I know I'm getting well paid for this sort of jazz, and everybody shrugs and says, "Well, old Wilt can laugh all the way while he's walking to the bank." Actually, it's better than that. I can laugh all the way while driving to the bank in my 527.000 baby-lavender Bentley Continental convertible. But that doesn't help the hurt piled up inside. Let me put it another way: I get paid big money for playing basketball, and I play it. But I do not get paid big money for being hounded and instigated and called a lot of things I am not, right? In a funny way, name-calling is one of the key things that makes professional basketball a bush-league affair when it doesn't have to—it shouldn't —be that way at all. You don't see that sort of thing in other sports. Does the owner of the New York Giants say bad things about Jimmy Brown because Jimmy plays for the Cleveland Browns? Never. Big-league owners know that inter-league sniping gives the whole game a bad name. And the fans expect better conduct. You won't hear Al Lopez calling Mickey Mantle a bum. Unfortunately, the fans don't always get such conduct in pro basketball.

I ask you: Where else but in professional basketball do you get 1) owners, 2) players and 3) coaches all knocking each other? How can Ned Irish of the New York Knicks say "I wouldn't have Wilt on my team?" Never mind Ned's personal feelings about me: how he might feel personally doesn't matter. But in sniping at me—or at anybody—can he be helping the NBA? He's knocking it down. It creates a strictly bush atmosphere. And when this sort of thing happens you start to wonder if the people involved really want to improve basketball or maybe just get their names in the papers. They have money and what they really want is fame. I guess. I think some NBA owners regard having their own basketball team as sort of like an executive yo-yo: you know, like a toy. They like the idea of really owning something in sports and maybe they can't afford a whole football team. (It's nice to have something to kick around at the country club. "Yeah, man, as I was telling my team the other day.. ..")

All of which is fine. Man, I don't care what these people spend their money on. But don't forget, they're trading in the lives of real people here. How about Franklin Mieuli, who owned about 10% of the San Francisco 49ers, and he had a hold of that little piece of action and then he got the Owners' hots. So when Eddie Gottlieb sold his share of the Warriors, Mieuli dashed right over and bought it all up, and now here he is, really able to get in there and mix it up. Frankly, I doubt if Mieuli knows very much about basketball. But he wants to speak up about it, and now that he is an owner, now he can. Oh, man! And what do you get in situations like this in the league? I'll tell you what you get: I was sitting in my apartment in San Francisco one night looking out at the view, and a newspaper reporter knocked at my door. He said something cheery like. "Hello. You have now been traded. Goodbye." And do you think the owner had the courtesy to even talk to me about it? Hah. (In this case, though, I figured something was coming up. Some time before, Gottlieb had talked to me and kind of asked how I'd like going back to Philadelphia to play. And I was honest and warned him that if they signed me it would have to be with the understanding that it might be my last season.

How about Barry Kramer coming in for practice one day, and about the time he gets down to his undershorts someone says something like: "By the way, man, don't bother undressing any further. You don't play for us anymore." Just like that. And Wayne Hightower. He walked into the locker room in New York: "Hightower? Oh. yeah. Hightower. You've been traded to Baltimore."

It's the old yo-yo. Like the owners have a little game of their own going that we don't know anything about. You know, a secret league where they say. "Look. I'll give you two forwards and a regulation basketball and a couple of rolls of tape for a big center and a pair of sneakers." And what about the image to the public? Oh man, never mind the image. And if that isn't bush, baby, I don't know what is.

Now. I don't want to sound like rhythm and blues. You don't have to set this story to music. But there is a reason this action has such a crazy impact in basketball that it does not have in other sports. Look, we all know there must be trades and player cuts and drafts. We all know there must be owner wheeling and dealing. Fine. All sports wheel and deal. And we don't even want to know all the owners' business. You follow me? But basketball is a kind of special case because the players get so close to each other playing this game. The game demands close, instinctive relationships. We're more sensitive about teammates than, say, linebackers, who are bought and sold by the pound like hamburger. Basketball players build strong friendships and respect on and off the court.

So we understand the owners have to deal. But it doesn't have to be this bush. They could call the players in and let them know what's cooking. I don't mean ask the players' opinion. But at least let them know, see? And then you wouldn't have those kids out there all jumpy and not playing 100 % basketball. In football and baseball also most of the trading is done in the off season, and by the time the regular season comes around the shock has worn off. The top players, all the ones I know who are serious about this game, are all trying to improve it, to get the bush image out of it. But, man, it's tough.

That's just the beginning. Let me take you inside a secret practice session of the Philadelphia 76ers and we'll see how this grabs you: We're divided up into two squads for scrimmaging. We're inside Convention Hall and it is big and dark and cold and empty, and when the ball slaps into your hands it makes a ringing, hollow sound up against the ceiling. We're wearing a sort of catch-me-come-kiss-me collection of bits and pieces of old uniforms, and we look like the orphans' picnic. Coach Dolph Schayes is trying to teach us basketball fundamentals (and I think we'll agree right here that it is a little late for shut sort of thing. If we don't know the fundamentals by now. we're all dead). Suddenly, on a fast break or a play under the basket. Dolph sees something none of us can see. He stops everything. "All right.- he will bark. "Yellow team take three laps around the court." And off we go—five big, hulking, grown-up men—loping around the basketball court like a bunch of junior high school kids. Our technical practice on play patterns has been interrupted for this punishment, and the pace of our game has been thrown off. This is Schayes's way of spanking us. Then we get back to work and get a furious scrimmage going and a nice sort of rhythm starts to take shape. "Wait! Hold it," says Schayes. "Blue team take three laps around the court.

There we go again. Everything stops. And the secret in all this is that the blue team hasn't done anything wrong. Dolph is just so soft-hearted that he's been thinking about it for a few minutes and has decided that they ought to do it, too. And any punishment value of the laps is nullified, right? It's almost the same thing in actual league play. Schayes is so tender-hearted that someone sitting on the bench can look over at him with those big wet eyes, and he'll put them into the game—even if the man replaced is having a big night. You see? In the dressing room one day a couple of weeks ago, Dolph came up with another idea. "We've got to fake those fouls more," he said. "Let's throw up our hands and stagger backwards and really make it look real to the referee." "But. Coach," said Dave Gambee, "This only works if you're a good actor. A lot of us can't pull it off. We just don't look innocent." "All right." says Schayes. "I guess we'd better play it straight. But fake them when you can, huh?"

Now. whatever you do, don't get me wrong, there is a hardcore moral hidden away in here, baby, and it goes right down to one of the really fundamental things that is wrong with professional basketball. The coaching system is right out of bushville. It's one of those things that went wrong with the system years ago. Here is a guy who has played long and well and faithfully. And he comes up with a bad knee or something like that and the owners say. "Well. we've got to do something nice for good old Whoever." So what do they do? They make a coach out of him, and next season he suddenly turns up coaching his old cronies, the guys he used to play with. And playing the game does not necessarily qualify a man to coach it, right? Take Dolph. Here is a genuinely good guy. He is tall, handsome: he dresses well, he is soft-spoken and he is nice to the wife and kids. And right now that makes him almost too nice a guy to coach a bunch of hardened basketball professionals. Schayes knows all the plays and strategies well—and if he had any legs left he could run them—but he has a tough time passing this information on to the players.

Meanwhile, here are the NBA owners, with diamond rings on their little fingers and cigars in their mouths, and they want winners. "Do what you have to do, coach, but boot me home a winner. Don't talk to me about personality problem", "Coach, just show me that big box score. Don't come to me with the song and dance about a tired team.", "I know the season is too long, but what the hell, baby, win, win, win." A gentle, soft-hearted coach against this kind of background is like a little old lamb in there with the hungry lions. Schayes, for one, has that woolly look, and there are plenty of others. We could have won at least seven or eight more games than we did this season with fierce eat'em-up coaching.

There are examples of this through the association. I'm not in a position to comment on the Detroit situation: man, I've got enough problems of my own. But here it is again: they take Dave DeBusschere, a second-year man in basketball, and they make him a coach. It's a waste of Dave's talents and worse than that: it's bush, baby. Pro basketball has created a lot of jumpy coaches. The poor guys, it's a wonder some of them don't sort of fall off the bench and maybe foam at the mouth a little. I promise you that some coaches in this association get word that they've lost one player and picked up two—or some combination like that—and they're absolutely dumbfounded. And very, very few of them can speak up or talk back.

The word was all around the league that when Paul Seymour was coach at St. Louis he protested about some owner moves and he got fired. And Seymour, baby, was a very very good coach. A real loss to the game. On the old Warriors. Neil Johnston came up late or something like that, and Gottlieb made him a coach. Another one of those things out of sympathy. In our first year together—it was 1960. I think-we had a good year and took second to Boston. And I don't think this was a reflection of Neil's coaching so much as that we just had a great team, you understand?

Then when the second year came along we lost to the Syracuse Nationals in the semifinals of the playoffs—and then Neil was dismissed, and he kind of lashed out and made some very unfair statements. He made out like Wilt Chamberlain was a prima donna and he couldn't talk to me. And as I remember the two years with Johnston we had one disagreement. Just one. But I guess he had to blame losing his job on somebody instead of his coaching. It all weaves into this image we've got. Since professional basketball began, owners have been hiring the wrong kind of coaches—then firing them for not winning. There are enough ex-coaches around to form their own Old Cats League or something.

Take Owner Ben Kerner of the St. Louis Hawks: he is known around the league for the ability to tire a coach before the coach can get the laces tied up on his sneakers. Cincinnati eased Charley Wolf out because he didn't produce a winner right away. In San Francisco, Bob Feerick decided he wasn't ready for coaching, and he got out of it gracefully by becoming general manager. But, you know, what do the owners expect—that maybe there will be nine winners in the season? And if not. what is the remedy: Firing eight coaches? Sometimes that seems to be the idea around here.

Good college coaches arc usually too smart to come into the professional ranks. They take one look at this snake pit, and they say. "Who me? Man, are you kidding me?" Happily, this system doesn't go flat across the board in the NBA. The owners who have a feeling for a coach will go out and buy him a good team and give him the chance to build it into a powerhouse, and they leave him alone. Know what I mean? I mean, look at the Boston Celtics and Auerbach. You know the real key reason why they are so good as a team? Man. those guys have been together for an average of nine years now. They're so close they're like Siamese sextuplets. How about me? Would I coach if they asked me? I happen to think I would make a pretty good coach. But don't ask me.

That Red Auerbach. Now, isn't he too much? With that cigar and the look like he would snap you in half. I mean mean. But what a guy. I can remember the first time we met—and maybe you don't know this, but he was my coach at one time. It was back in 1953 and I was a high school freshman then. Maybe about ... oh, 6 feet 10 1/2 or so ... I had been playing a lot of basketball already against some pretty tough older players, and I thought I was pretty hot stuff. And Haskell Cohen, the public relations guy for the NBA—man, he was really looking into the future—had spotted me down at Overbrook High in Philadelphia. And he got me a summer job bell-hopping at Kutsher's resort up in the Catskills. It was a sort of breeding ground for future professionals. Haskell was looking beyond high school and college, I guess. So I turned up on the circuit carrying suitcases and waiting on tables and sort of standing around all bones and eyeballs and teeth. Every summer resort up there had its own basketball team made up of college kids who needed jobs for the summer. They worked a little and played a little. And who was the coach at Kutsher's? The man with the cigar.

Looking back on it. I think maybe it was my attitude that first touched off Auerbach. You know, I wasn't exactly the most modest kid in town, and I had a lot of moves for a high school (rattle playing with the big boys. And when Red would call practice he would sort of talk to me in that voice that catches you right here, right between the ribs. He especially didn't like the way I played defense.

"Don't you think, Chamberlain," Red would growl. "that it might be sort of a good idea to defense your man from in from of him instead of behind him? What the hell are you doing back there?" But I went on defensing from behind the guys, reaching around with my arms to get the ball, waiting to fall on them when they wheeled around to shoot.

"We are going to play Shawanga Lodge next." said Red, looking through me. "And you are going to have to defense B. H. Born. I think it only fair to tell you, Chamberlain, that B. H. Born has just made All-America from the University of Kansas. And I think it only fair to tell you that B. H. Born is going to make chopped chicken liver out of you." So we played Shawanga.

At the half-time break I had scored 30-some points and Born had scored exactly two. And I came ambling back into the dressing room and flopped myself down on the training table and folded my arms behind my head. I was whistling. you know, doe de doo de doo, and sort of looking side-wise at old Red while he looked back at me with a steely stare. Finally he grinned a little trace of a grin at me. "Now about the second half." he said. Then, "Now, Mr Chamberlain, may I please have your attention for a moment?" Suddenly we understood each other. Red and I. And I learned to play defense on both sides; I play it a lot in front now. After that. Red would let me serve him drinks and cigars in his room when he was up all night playing poker, and he later got me aside to talk about future schooling. "Why don't you go to Harvard. kid?" he said. "And then I'll be able to pick you off in the territorial draft for the Celtics." But other forces were already at work, a bunch of things that would change my entire life. After that summer, life began to get tougher.

From that summer when I was a gangly kid I looked forward to playing professional basketball. I mean, hot dam, all that glamour. World travel and like that. Big money and cheering crowds and beautiful girls sort of jammed all around the dressing-room door. Now, there is a boyhood dream gone to pieces.

Pro basketball is traveling, all right. But not from country to country or even city to city. It is traveling from locker room to locker room. And dressing rooms all seem to have that same stale smell about them after a while. It is sweat and sneakers and soaking wet uniforms and wrinkled clothes, and there is the steady hiss of showers. Listen, you kids out there. Listen, Lew Alcindor, for one. Defeat and victory all smell exactly the same in a pro basketball dressing room alter a while. You get so you don't feel elation. You just feel beat. And there is no crowd of beautiful girls waiting outside a dressing room door- -nor much time for dating, anyway. Last week I was sitting all lonely in the Sheraton Hotel in Philadelphia—the rooms there arc like little bitty boxes —and pawing through the stuff in my bag. I came up with the phone number of this girl—I mean, she is a dish--and called her for a date. When the phone started ringing I suddenly remembered that I hadn't called her in like, four years. And what would I say if her husband answered the phone? (It turned out she wasn't married. Whew. But it also turned out that she had another date that night. See what I mean?)

What I'm telling you—you, Alcindor, and all you long-armed kids out there—is that basketball burns you out. And if you make it in the pros you had better save your money and be ready to retire at any hour. It can all end like snapping your fingers. Pro basketball burns you faster because you play a faster game than anybody else and pretty soon—zap! You start to lose your desire. It isn't always playing the game that gets to you —the real pros love the game and, man, they love to play it—it is some of the hush things that will finally nail you. They have nailed me. And sometimes I don't want to retire tomorrow: I want to retire yesterday. You follow me?

Let me put it this way: You can play baseball until you're 45 (if you can stand the lack of real action and that 162-game season) and you can play football until you're pretty well up there, too. But not basketball. The saddest thing about this is that there are some remedies close at hand for all this. Put them all together and they don't spell mother, baby. They spell money.

Pro basketball is still the most exciting thing going on. But it is sadly overexposed. Man, by the end of the season the public has got basketball up to here. Since it got going good, the game has been dominated by some owners who have got big money worries and little reserves. Know what I mean? They're forced to be competitive and too businesslike about this game, and they can't let up and relax for long enough to give it the help it needs. In the National Football League the owners can go first class all the way and not worry about the right-now revenue. Can the owners look for a long-term, five-year gain in basketball? Why in five years many of them won't be around.

I'm in my seventh year and I guess I'm lucky to have held all of me together this long. It's at the point now where I lose eight to 12 pounds during each game, and sometime my stomach hurls so bad out there under the basket that I sort of have to lean on the guy guarding me and gasp to catch my breath. I used to drink a half gallon of milk right alter every game and about seven other quarts of milk during the day. But now Dr. Lorber has got me cut down to one bottle of milk a day and has me on a diet so bland that it doesn't even have hot dogs on it.

Man, I have lived on hot dogs for years. So now I sit in the locker room after coming off the floor, and I start to polish out a quart of ginger ale or Seven-Up, and Ike Richman—Ike is a very dramatic small guy—comes in and sort or staggers backward and slaps his hand to his forehead. "That stuff will kill you!" Ike says. Will you for once stay on your diet?"' And he snatches the bottle away from me and splashes it on his hands and the floor and all over my bare feet. "Look here." he says rubbing his hands "This stuff is so strong it will clean my hands. No wonder you've got a sore stomach. What am I going to do with you?"

Well, honest, Ike, I don't know what you're going to do with me or what I am going to do with you. But whatever it is, you'll be the first to know.

First I am going to get well, I don't know, maybe I'll go to the Mayo Clinic - if they've got a bed out there big enough for me and get this stomach all fixed up. Then I will go back to my apartment and sit there and play my electric guitar (I don't play melodies too well, but I can chord like crazy!) until it drives the neighbors out of their minds. I will put on my Day-O! hat (you know "Day-O! Daylight come and me wanna go home") and my dark shades and take my conga drum and go over in Central Park and sit there and play it and figure out the future.

I've gotten psychologically punchy over the years I've played basketball. People have been snatching and pulling at me since I was little ... well, since I was a kid, not a little kid. I've been stared at, laughed at, insulted, investigated and generally turned inside out.

Man, the FBI grabbed me while I was still in Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, and word was getting around that I was getting some pretty fabulous offers from colleges around the country. Like tens of thousands of dollars under the table and hidden away in caves and secret funds. Offers of big cars and like that. There I was, still a young, impressionable boy who didn't want to do anything in the world but just plain play basketball. And they were on me like I was the biggest criminal in the country. From that day on, basketball got better, but my life got tougher.

I will definitely be voting Russell over him this year.

Thank you for the finding! Man, Wilt took no prisoners

[Djoker]

VOTING POST

POY

1. Bill Russell - League MVP and 1st Team All-NBA over Wilt. And of course a champion once again behind an outlier defense. Shot an absurd % in the Finals and while he wasn't at his offensive best in the PS, he was definitely better than in 1964. 14.1/24.1/5.3 on 47.2 %TS (-0.7 rTS) then 16.5/25.2/6.3 on 54.0 %TS (+6.1 rTS) in the PS. Easy choice.

2. Jerry West - 1st Team All-NBA. Tough to go against a guy who had the kind of postseason run West had. With Baylor injured, he carried an historic offense load and came through marvelously while also being a strong defender. 31.0/6.0/4.9 on 57.2 %TS (+9.3 rTS) in the RS then 40.6/5.7/5.3 on 53.4 %TS (+5.5 rTS) in the PS. Against Boston's meat grinder, he averaged 33.6/5.8/3.4 on 51.2 %TS (+3.3 rTS) despite being the only legitimate scoring threat. That's just absurd postseason scoring and combined with a better RS than the #3 guy on the list gets Jerry the #2 spot.

3. Wilt Chamberlain - It was a tough choice for #3 but I ended up going with Wilt. I feel like his range is wide in a season like this depending on one's criteria. He just had a terrible first half of the year with the Warriors amid heart ailments or pancreatitis or stomach pains depending on which version of events you believe. He had reduced impact in San Francisco and averaged 38.9/23.5/3.1 on 49.5 %TS (+1.6 rTS) while the team was playing at worst in the league level. Then he got traded to Philly midway through and averaged 30.1/22.3/3.8 on 54.0 %TS (+6.1 rTS). Most importantly though, he had a ridiculously strong PS run averaging 29.3/27.2/4.4 on 55.2 %TS (+7.3 rTS) while playing great defense. They always say it's not about how you start but how you finish and that's true to an extent. Despite a forgetful RS (horrible first half) he made up for it and then some in the playoffs. He just eviscerated Bill Russell who was powerless to stop him. In fact it's the best scoring series he ever had against his archrival.

4. Oscar Robertson - 1st Team All-NBA. Still arguably the best offensive player in the league. Lost to Wilt's Sixers despite being the favorite in the series so it's hard to be higher on Oscar in a year as strong as this one even though the Big O himself played very well. He averaged 30.4/9.0/11.5 on 56.1 %TS (+8.2 rTS) in the RS then 28.0/4.8/12.0 on 52.8 %TS (+4.9 rTS) in the PS.

5. Sam Jones - 2nd Team All-ABA and the offensive engine of the Celtics. This guy could score the ball in a hurry. 25.9/5.1/2.8 on 50.5 %TS (+2.6 rTS) in the RS then 28.6/4.6/2.5 on 51.8 %TS (+3.9 rTS) in the PS.

OPOY

1. Jerry West - Historic scoring in the PS.

2. Oscar Robertson - Amazing combination of scoring and playmaking.

3. Wilt Chamberlain - Strong scoring in the PS while passing the ball too.

DPOY

1. Bill Russell

2. Wilt Chamberlain

3. Nate Thurmond

[trex_8063]

I've only got time for a POY ballot this time. Going with the following....

Player of the Year
1. Bill Russell - Arguably his peak season. Monster defensive and rebounding imprint as always. Actually increases his offensive output and efficiency in the playoffs, despite most of the sample being played against Wilt. He went for 16.5 ppg on improved TS% (excellent for the time period, in fact), while also leading the team in apg in the playoffs. Specifically in the Finals he averaged 17.8 ppg on an absurd 68.9% TS. That's a relevant add to the guy who is comfortably the best defensive player and strong locker-room presence. En route to title, of course.

2. Jerry West - Awesome two-way guard. Is 2nd in the league in scoring this year, on the league's 2nd-best TS%, too, while also coming up with 6 rpg and 5 apg, for the league's 2nd-best offense. Big playoff showing this year, too, averaging >40 ppg for the playoffs. Not much else to say, if that will suffice.

3. Wilt Chamberlain - Was a bit of a toss-up between him and Oscar for 3rd. Certainly the illness (bit of rambling petulance in evident in the writing ZeppelinPage posted, too) and the lack of substantial impact in SF for half the season is a bit of a ding. But seems to make an imprint in Philly, and plays very very well in the playoffs, very nearly offing the Russell Celtics (my lord, how might the basketball hierarchies be viewed differently if that had happened?). And considering Oscar slumps a little in the ps, I'm giving Wilt the edge.

4. Oscar Robertson - Another absolutely marvellous rs, once more leading the league's best offense. If not for the playoff slump he could have had #3 (or maybe even #2) for me this year. Still, it's clear to me that no one really touches these four guys.

5. Walt Bellamy - Apparent primary anchor of the offense that closely trails Cincy and LA, and does so without a high-level playmaker, and without any good scorers off the bench (plus Gus Johnson chucking up a lot of shots on poor efficiency). But Walt and Howell lift that cast up from the offensive doldrums.
Bellamy is 6th in ppg @ >+7% rTS [4th in the league], and also 6th in rpg. He's 5th in PER, 9th in WS/48, 7th in estimated BPM; all while playing 41.3 mpg and not missing a game (which leaves him 6th in WS and 6th in estimated VORP).

Very good case for Sam Jones, too; though I see he's already getting plenty of love. And will give a shout out to Bellamy's teammate, Howell.

[OhayoKD]

This is a crazy Wilt year, his passing regressed and he went 10-28 in his first 38 games including a 11 game losing streak with him in the lineup (barely sure how that's possible) and then lost G7 by 1 point to the Celtics after which he would've just needed to be at Baylor less Lakers team in the finals. He also had an SI article come out in the middle of the Celtics series where he threw the owners and his coach under the bus.

Spoiler:

Oh, man, this is going to be better than psychiatry. In the first place, I am much too big to get comfortable on that crazy couch. In the second place, I am all fired up about speaking for myself this one time and have it come out the way I said it. I have a sort of special, savage reason for all this: there are a lot of people out there who will be surprised that I can write, because they are usually astounded that I can even talk.

I know this is true, because I get the old routine all the time. I stopped getting angry about it years and years ago, but it still drives all my friends crazy. Whenever we're standing around together—man, I mean any place—crowds of people come up and just stare at us. Then someone will nudge one of my pals slightly and say, "Hey, who duh big guy?" or, "So that's old Wilt the Stilt, huh? How tall is he, really?" they say. And then, "Will you ask him can I have his autograph for my kid?" And then my friends sort of sidle away from me—they want to stand clear to show everybody I'm not on a leash or anything like that—and they say. "Come on. Wilt can talk, you know. He's a real human, man. How come you don't ask him yourself?" Then, once they get over that hurdle, people are always a little disappointed I don't say, "duuuhhhhhh." And that, in part, is what this story is all about. This is life inside a giant, baby. I know that how I feel is not too important.

All right. What is important is what has happened to make me feel the way I do and all of the psychological hammering and tugging and pulling that got me into this frame of mind. This is more than life inside a giant. This is the story of my life inside professional basketball—the greatest game ever played, a game that suffers from being bush when it doesn't want to be bush, a game that may always be bush unless some basic changes are made. And when we get to the end of this chapter, the part where they say, "Tune in next week," or the end of the story, where they say, "Can this poor monster from Philadelphia really find happiness?" You'll know just how it feels to be Goliath. How it feels to be seven feet and 1.06 inches tall with no place to hide. After all, you remember in the Old Testament that David had all the best of it, right? Nobody even thought to say or even ask how Goliath must have felt just sort of standing around there. Goliath didn't get any of the good lines, you know?

The timing of my story is important for three reasons.

Reason No. 1: I'm at the top of this game and I'm thinking of retiring. I will be perfectly honest and say I'm thinking of not retiring, too. But I have now racked up all the all-time scoring and playing records—all the ones that count—and what else is there? Final standings at the end of this season: Chamberlain leads the scoring, with 2,534 points, for the sixth year in a row. Chamberlain shoots 2,081 and hits 1,063 for a .510 average. or 34.7 points a game. And that's in 73 games: I didn't play them all. See what I mean? Man, I have fulfilled everything I wanted in pro basket-ball except winning the NBA title. And I can't do that all by myself, right?

Money has nothing to do with the way I feel. I have been investing my money under smart counseling for years. And even though my accountant, Alan Levitt, calls me every single day from Philadelphia and says something like "Run for the hills, baby, we're broke." It is still not critical.

I also have a sore stomach. Because of my size it is more sore stomach than you ever heard of. My doctor, Stanley Lorber, is considered the best internist in Philadelphia, and he can't find out what's wrong with it. But he gets a real kick out of examining me, and he uses me as a subject for lecturing his students. I think pretty soon I am going to start charging him. Ike Richman, part owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, feels so bad about my stomachache that he got real desperate last week and said. "I know. Let's go to a hypnotist." Man, a hypnotist—who, me? I thought I'd put Ike off, so I said. "Man, how much will you pay me to go and get hypnotized? A hundred dollars an hour?" And Ike said he'd do it. Anything to get me feeling back in shape. That's the kind of guy he is. But no matter what we do it keeps getting worse instead of better, and my health is going to figure big in my future. This is my summer of decision.

Reason No. 2: I'm thinking of doing a lot of things other than playing basketball. I am thinking of living my own life, for one thing. I could take life easier and manage my apartment house properties and my nightclub in Harlem and the six corporations I'm tied up in—and be a business executive in a size-IS collar, button-down oxford-cloth shin and the biggest hotdamn gray flannel suit you ever saw in your whole life. I have all kinds of other offers, including a role in a civil rights movie based on the new book Look Away. I could go into boxing. And don't think for a minute I couldn't be heavyweight champion of the world. You hear me out there. Sonny Liston? You don't believe me? Look at that picture on the cover again, baby. I am also considering—but not too seriously—standing offers to enter professional baseball or football. But we've got to face it. I would fall with one hell of a crash on a football kid (even though it might take more than one guy to bring me down). And while I might be hot stuff catching high ones in the outfield, even the wildest pitcher in baseball would murder me at home plate because I have got such a big strike zone.

Reason No. 3: Finally. I am tired of being a villain. It is not the role I had in mind when I entered this sport. I don't feel like a villain, and I don't think like a villain. And there are girls out there who insist I don't exactly look mean, either, you know? Never mind the mustache and beard, man. My mother thinks it looks awful, but the overall vote is in favor of it. And I think I have spotted a trend away from that sort of thing. Villainy, I mean. In the old-time days there was no sympathy for the big guys. Remember Bluto, the big, fat one in the Popeye cartoons? And he would always grab old Olive Oyl and run off with her, and Popeye would eat all that crazy (ugh) spinach and then kick the hell out of Bluto? Well, Bluto is pretty much out of it now. And take the case of Frankenstein's monster. He used to be a real heller and now even he has been gentled up on TV.

Then, finally, there is a new kindly hero: the Jolly Green Giant. It's a trend, you see? Now, I don't exactly see myself as the Jolly Bronze Giant—I don't dig that leafy little costume, for one thing—but you get the theme. Boy, I don't know. How does a guy get to be a villain in the first place? Not all at once. I promise you. It is a cumulative series of little things—like little jabs from sportswriters—that have a way of adding up over the years to make the total picture of a bad guy. They have a way of slowly filling in an image that seems to stick in people's minds. I don't know of any athlete in the world who has had to prove himself so many times. Over and over again, fighting off the image. give you an example: "That Wilt. He just stands there and dunks the ball," says one writer. So I work hard and perfect a jump shot. "That Wilt. He shouldn't fade away from the basket when he's shooting the jumper." they say. So I try some other shots. And I concentrate on defense. "That Wilt," they say this time. "He just plays one end of the court."

So I dash around and hustle down to the other end of the court. "He's hogging all the action." So I try more team play, and I feed the ball off like mad. "That Wilt," they say, fresh out of criticism. "He's a fink." Man, how can I win? Look: I know I'm getting well paid for this sort of jazz, and everybody shrugs and says, "Well, old Wilt can laugh all the way while he's walking to the bank." Actually, it's better than that. I can laugh all the way while driving to the bank in my 527.000 baby-lavender Bentley Continental convertible. But that doesn't help the hurt piled up inside. Let me put it another way: I get paid big money for playing basketball, and I play it. But I do not get paid big money for being hounded and instigated and called a lot of things I am not, right? In a funny way, name-calling is one of the key things that makes professional basketball a bush-league affair when it doesn't have to—it shouldn't —be that way at all. You don't see that sort of thing in other sports. Does the owner of the New York Giants say bad things about Jimmy Brown because Jimmy plays for the Cleveland Browns? Never. Big-league owners know that inter-league sniping gives the whole game a bad name. And the fans expect better conduct. You won't hear Al Lopez calling Mickey Mantle a bum. Unfortunately, the fans don't always get such conduct in pro basketball.

I ask you: Where else but in professional basketball do you get 1) owners, 2) players and 3) coaches all knocking each other? How can Ned Irish of the New York Knicks say "I wouldn't have Wilt on my team?" Never mind Ned's personal feelings about me: how he might feel personally doesn't matter. But in sniping at me—or at anybody—can he be helping the NBA? He's knocking it down. It creates a strictly bush atmosphere. And when this sort of thing happens you start to wonder if the people involved really want to improve basketball or maybe just get their names in the papers. They have money and what they really want is fame. I guess. I think some NBA owners regard having their own basketball team as sort of like an executive yo-yo: you know, like a toy. They like the idea of really owning something in sports and maybe they can't afford a whole football team. (It's nice to have something to kick around at the country club. "Yeah, man, as I was telling my team the other day.. ..")

All of which is fine. Man, I don't care what these people spend their money on. But don't forget, they're trading in the lives of real people here. How about Franklin Mieuli, who owned about 10% of the San Francisco 49ers, and he had a hold of that little piece of action and then he got the Owners' hots. So when Eddie Gottlieb sold his share of the Warriors, Mieuli dashed right over and bought it all up, and now here he is, really able to get in there and mix it up. Frankly, I doubt if Mieuli knows very much about basketball. But he wants to speak up about it, and now that he is an owner, now he can. Oh, man! And what do you get in situations like this in the league? I'll tell you what you get: I was sitting in my apartment in San Francisco one night looking out at the view, and a newspaper reporter knocked at my door. He said something cheery like. "Hello. You have now been traded. Goodbye." And do you think the owner had the courtesy to even talk to me about it? Hah. (In this case, though, I figured something was coming up. Some time before, Gottlieb had talked to me and kind of asked how I'd like going back to Philadelphia to play. And I was honest and warned him that if they signed me it would have to be with the understanding that it might be my last season.

How about Barry Kramer coming in for practice one day, and about the time he gets down to his undershorts someone says something like: "By the way, man, don't bother undressing any further. You don't play for us anymore." Just like that. And Wayne Hightower. He walked into the locker room in New York: "Hightower? Oh. yeah. Hightower. You've been traded to Baltimore."

It's the old yo-yo. Like the owners have a little game of their own going that we don't know anything about. You know, a secret league where they say. "Look. I'll give you two forwards and a regulation basketball and a couple of rolls of tape for a big center and a pair of sneakers." And what about the image to the public? Oh man, never mind the image. And if that isn't bush, baby, I don't know what is.

Now. I don't want to sound like rhythm and blues. You don't have to set this story to music. But there is a reason this action has such a crazy impact in basketball that it does not have in other sports. Look, we all know there must be trades and player cuts and drafts. We all know there must be owner wheeling and dealing. Fine. All sports wheel and deal. And we don't even want to know all the owners' business. You follow me? But basketball is a kind of special case because the players get so close to each other playing this game. The game demands close, instinctive relationships. We're more sensitive about teammates than, say, linebackers, who are bought and sold by the pound like hamburger. Basketball players build strong friendships and respect on and off the court.

So we understand the owners have to deal. But it doesn't have to be this bush. They could call the players in and let them know what's cooking. I don't mean ask the players' opinion. But at least let them know, see? And then you wouldn't have those kids out there all jumpy and not playing 100 % basketball. In football and baseball also most of the trading is done in the off season, and by the time the regular season comes around the shock has worn off. The top players, all the ones I know who are serious about this game, are all trying to improve it, to get the bush image out of it. But, man, it's tough.

That's just the beginning. Let me take you inside a secret practice session of the Philadelphia 76ers and we'll see how this grabs you: We're divided up into two squads for scrimmaging. We're inside Convention Hall and it is big and dark and cold and empty, and when the ball slaps into your hands it makes a ringing, hollow sound up against the ceiling. We're wearing a sort of catch-me-come-kiss-me collection of bits and pieces of old uniforms, and we look like the orphans' picnic. Coach Dolph Schayes is trying to teach us basketball fundamentals (and I think we'll agree right here that it is a little late for shut sort of thing. If we don't know the fundamentals by now. we're all dead). Suddenly, on a fast break or a play under the basket. Dolph sees something none of us can see. He stops everything. "All right.- he will bark. "Yellow team take three laps around the court." And off we go—five big, hulking, grown-up men—loping around the basketball court like a bunch of junior high school kids. Our technical practice on play patterns has been interrupted for this punishment, and the pace of our game has been thrown off. This is Schayes's way of spanking us. Then we get back to work and get a furious scrimmage going and a nice sort of rhythm starts to take shape. "Wait! Hold it," says Schayes. "Blue team take three laps around the court.

There we go again. Everything stops. And the secret in all this is that the blue team hasn't done anything wrong. Dolph is just so soft-hearted that he's been thinking about it for a few minutes and has decided that they ought to do it, too. And any punishment value of the laps is nullified, right? It's almost the same thing in actual league play. Schayes is so tender-hearted that someone sitting on the bench can look over at him with those big wet eyes, and he'll put them into the game—even if the man replaced is having a big night. You see? In the dressing room one day a couple of weeks ago, Dolph came up with another idea. "We've got to fake those fouls more," he said. "Let's throw up our hands and stagger backwards and really make it look real to the referee." "But. Coach," said Dave Gambee, "This only works if you're a good actor. A lot of us can't pull it off. We just don't look innocent." "All right." says Schayes. "I guess we'd better play it straight. But fake them when you can, huh?"

Now. whatever you do, don't get me wrong, there is a hardcore moral hidden away in here, baby, and it goes right down to one of the really fundamental things that is wrong with professional basketball. The coaching system is right out of bushville. It's one of those things that went wrong with the system years ago. Here is a guy who has played long and well and faithfully. And he comes up with a bad knee or something like that and the owners say. "Well. we've got to do something nice for good old Whoever." So what do they do? They make a coach out of him, and next season he suddenly turns up coaching his old cronies, the guys he used to play with. And playing the game does not necessarily qualify a man to coach it, right? Take Dolph. Here is a genuinely good guy. He is tall, handsome: he dresses well, he is soft-spoken and he is nice to the wife and kids. And right now that makes him almost too nice a guy to coach a bunch of hardened basketball professionals. Schayes knows all the plays and strategies well—and if he had any legs left he could run them—but he has a tough time passing this information on to the players.

Meanwhile, here are the NBA owners, with diamond rings on their little fingers and cigars in their mouths, and they want winners. "Do what you have to do, coach, but boot me home a winner. Don't talk to me about personality problem", "Coach, just show me that big box score. Don't come to me with the song and dance about a tired team.", "I know the season is too long, but what the hell, baby, win, win, win." A gentle, soft-hearted coach against this kind of background is like a little old lamb in there with the hungry lions. Schayes, for one, has that woolly look, and there are plenty of others. We could have won at least seven or eight more games than we did this season with fierce eat'em-up coaching.

There are examples of this through the association. I'm not in a position to comment on the Detroit situation: man, I've got enough problems of my own. But here it is again: they take Dave DeBusschere, a second-year man in basketball, and they make him a coach. It's a waste of Dave's talents and worse than that: it's bush, baby. Pro basketball has created a lot of jumpy coaches. The poor guys, it's a wonder some of them don't sort of fall off the bench and maybe foam at the mouth a little. I promise you that some coaches in this association get word that they've lost one player and picked up two—or some combination like that—and they're absolutely dumbfounded. And very, very few of them can speak up or talk back.

The word was all around the league that when Paul Seymour was coach at St. Louis he protested about some owner moves and he got fired. And Seymour, baby, was a very very good coach. A real loss to the game. On the old Warriors. Neil Johnston came up late or something like that, and Gottlieb made him a coach. Another one of those things out of sympathy. In our first year together—it was 1960. I think-we had a good year and took second to Boston. And I don't think this was a reflection of Neil's coaching so much as that we just had a great team, you understand?

Then when the second year came along we lost to the Syracuse Nationals in the semifinals of the playoffs—and then Neil was dismissed, and he kind of lashed out and made some very unfair statements. He made out like Wilt Chamberlain was a prima donna and he couldn't talk to me. And as I remember the two years with Johnston we had one disagreement. Just one. But I guess he had to blame losing his job on somebody instead of his coaching. It all weaves into this image we've got. Since professional basketball began, owners have been hiring the wrong kind of coaches—then firing them for not winning. There are enough ex-coaches around to form their own Old Cats League or something.

Take Owner Ben Kerner of the St. Louis Hawks: he is known around the league for the ability to tire a coach before the coach can get the laces tied up on his sneakers. Cincinnati eased Charley Wolf out because he didn't produce a winner right away. In San Francisco, Bob Feerick decided he wasn't ready for coaching, and he got out of it gracefully by becoming general manager. But, you know, what do the owners expect—that maybe there will be nine winners in the season? And if not. what is the remedy: Firing eight coaches? Sometimes that seems to be the idea around here.

Good college coaches arc usually too smart to come into the professional ranks. They take one look at this snake pit, and they say. "Who me? Man, are you kidding me?" Happily, this system doesn't go flat across the board in the NBA. The owners who have a feeling for a coach will go out and buy him a good team and give him the chance to build it into a powerhouse, and they leave him alone. Know what I mean? I mean, look at the Boston Celtics and Auerbach. You know the real key reason why they are so good as a team? Man. those guys have been together for an average of nine years now. They're so close they're like Siamese sextuplets. How about me? Would I coach if they asked me? I happen to think I would make a pretty good coach. But don't ask me.

That Red Auerbach. Now, isn't he too much? With that cigar and the look like he would snap you in half. I mean mean. But what a guy. I can remember the first time we met—and maybe you don't know this, but he was my coach at one time. It was back in 1953 and I was a high school freshman then. Maybe about ... oh, 6 feet 10 1/2 or so ... I had been playing a lot of basketball already against some pretty tough older players, and I thought I was pretty hot stuff. And Haskell Cohen, the public relations guy for the NBA—man, he was really looking into the future—had spotted me down at Overbrook High in Philadelphia. And he got me a summer job bell-hopping at Kutsher's resort up in the Catskills. It was a sort of breeding ground for future professionals. Haskell was looking beyond high school and college, I guess. So I turned up on the circuit carrying suitcases and waiting on tables and sort of standing around all bones and eyeballs and teeth. Every summer resort up there had its own basketball team made up of college kids who needed jobs for the summer. They worked a little and played a little. And who was the coach at Kutsher's? The man with the cigar.

Looking back on it. I think maybe it was my attitude that first touched off Auerbach. You know, I wasn't exactly the most modest kid in town, and I had a lot of moves for a high school (rattle playing with the big boys. And when Red would call practice he would sort of talk to me in that voice that catches you right here, right between the ribs. He especially didn't like the way I played defense.

"Don't you think, Chamberlain," Red would growl. "that it might be sort of a good idea to defense your man from in from of him instead of behind him? What the hell are you doing back there?" But I went on defensing from behind the guys, reaching around with my arms to get the ball, waiting to fall on them when they wheeled around to shoot.

"We are going to play Shawanga Lodge next." said Red, looking through me. "And you are going to have to defense B. H. Born. I think it only fair to tell you, Chamberlain, that B. H. Born has just made All-America from the University of Kansas. And I think it only fair to tell you that B. H. Born is going to make chopped chicken liver out of you." So we played Shawanga.

At the half-time break I had scored 30-some points and Born had scored exactly two. And I came ambling back into the dressing room and flopped myself down on the training table and folded my arms behind my head. I was whistling. you know, doe de doo de doo, and sort of looking side-wise at old Red while he looked back at me with a steely stare. Finally he grinned a little trace of a grin at me. "Now about the second half." he said. Then, "Now, Mr Chamberlain, may I please have your attention for a moment?" Suddenly we understood each other. Red and I. And I learned to play defense on both sides; I play it a lot in front now. After that. Red would let me serve him drinks and cigars in his room when he was up all night playing poker, and he later got me aside to talk about future schooling. "Why don't you go to Harvard. kid?" he said. "And then I'll be able to pick you off in the territorial draft for the Celtics." But other forces were already at work, a bunch of things that would change my entire life. After that summer, life began to get tougher.

From that summer when I was a gangly kid I looked forward to playing professional basketball. I mean, hot dam, all that glamour. World travel and like that. Big money and cheering crowds and beautiful girls sort of jammed all around the dressing-room door. Now, there is a boyhood dream gone to pieces.

Pro basketball is traveling, all right. But not from country to country or even city to city. It is traveling from locker room to locker room. And dressing rooms all seem to have that same stale smell about them after a while. It is sweat and sneakers and soaking wet uniforms and wrinkled clothes, and there is the steady hiss of showers. Listen, you kids out there. Listen, Lew Alcindor, for one. Defeat and victory all smell exactly the same in a pro basketball dressing room alter a while. You get so you don't feel elation. You just feel beat. And there is no crowd of beautiful girls waiting outside a dressing room door- -nor much time for dating, anyway. Last week I was sitting all lonely in the Sheraton Hotel in Philadelphia—the rooms there arc like little bitty boxes —and pawing through the stuff in my bag. I came up with the phone number of this girl—I mean, she is a dish--and called her for a date. When the phone started ringing I suddenly remembered that I hadn't called her in like, four years. And what would I say if her husband answered the phone? (It turned out she wasn't married. Whew. But it also turned out that she had another date that night. See what I mean?)

What I'm telling you—you, Alcindor, and all you long-armed kids out there—is that basketball burns you out. And if you make it in the pros you had better save your money and be ready to retire at any hour. It can all end like snapping your fingers. Pro basketball burns you faster because you play a faster game than anybody else and pretty soon—zap! You start to lose your desire. It isn't always playing the game that gets to you —the real pros love the game and, man, they love to play it—it is some of the hush things that will finally nail you. They have nailed me. And sometimes I don't want to retire tomorrow: I want to retire yesterday. You follow me?

Let me put it this way: You can play baseball until you're 45 (if you can stand the lack of real action and that 162-game season) and you can play football until you're pretty well up there, too. But not basketball. The saddest thing about this is that there are some remedies close at hand for all this. Put them all together and they don't spell mother, baby. They spell money.

Pro basketball is still the most exciting thing going on. But it is sadly overexposed. Man, by the end of the season the public has got basketball up to here. Since it got going good, the game has been dominated by some owners who have got big money worries and little reserves. Know what I mean? They're forced to be competitive and too businesslike about this game, and they can't let up and relax for long enough to give it the help it needs. In the National Football League the owners can go first class all the way and not worry about the right-now revenue. Can the owners look for a long-term, five-year gain in basketball? Why in five years many of them won't be around.

I'm in my seventh year and I guess I'm lucky to have held all of me together this long. It's at the point now where I lose eight to 12 pounds during each game, and sometime my stomach hurls so bad out there under the basket that I sort of have to lean on the guy guarding me and gasp to catch my breath. I used to drink a half gallon of milk right alter every game and about seven other quarts of milk during the day. But now Dr. Lorber has got me cut down to one bottle of milk a day and has me on a diet so bland that it doesn't even have hot dogs on it.

Man, I have lived on hot dogs for years. So now I sit in the locker room after coming off the floor, and I start to polish out a quart of ginger ale or Seven-Up, and Ike Richman—Ike is a very dramatic small guy—comes in and sort or staggers backward and slaps his hand to his forehead. "That stuff will kill you!" Ike says. Will you for once stay on your diet?"' And he snatches the bottle away from me and splashes it on his hands and the floor and all over my bare feet. "Look here." he says rubbing his hands "This stuff is so strong it will clean my hands. No wonder you've got a sore stomach. What am I going to do with you?"

Well, honest, Ike, I don't know what you're going to do with me or what I am going to do with you. But whatever it is, you'll be the first to know.

First I am going to get well, I don't know, maybe I'll go to the Mayo Clinic - if they've got a bed out there big enough for me and get this stomach all fixed up. Then I will go back to my apartment and sit there and play my electric guitar (I don't play melodies too well, but I can chord like crazy!) until it drives the neighbors out of their minds. I will put on my Day-O! hat (you know "Day-O! Daylight come and me wanna go home") and my dark shades and take my conga drum and go over in Central Park and sit there and play it and figure out the future.

I've gotten psychologically punchy over the years I've played basketball. People have been snatching and pulling at me since I was little ... well, since I was a kid, not a little kid. I've been stared at, laughed at, insulted, investigated and generally turned inside out.

Man, the FBI grabbed me while I was still in Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, and word was getting around that I was getting some pretty fabulous offers from colleges around the country. Like tens of thousands of dollars under the table and hidden away in caves and secret funds. Offers of big cars and like that. There I was, still a young, impressionable boy who didn't want to do anything in the world but just plain play basketball. And they were on me like I was the biggest criminal in the country. From that day on, basketball got better, but my life got tougher.

I will definitely be voting Russell over him this year.

Thank you for the finding! Man, Wilt took no prisoners

Some additional context:

> In New York, a spokesman for the magazine said the article "was a completely accurate statement of remarks made over two or three weeks, many of them recorded on tape." A source close to the 76er management said the article actually wasn't too bad "but why couldn't the magazine wait until after the season was finished before publishing it." Bob Ottum did the writing after spending many weeks following Wilt around the league.