Lukeem wrote:Haha my bad
Apologies
Russel was a better defender but I believe the gap is nowhere near as large as most will admitt. Russell was a perfect piece in a perfect system and symbolized as well as anchored a great team defense. Again I reiterate that I believe Russell was the better defender before posters start misreading and leading this discussion somewhere far away from the point.
The key problem with what you're arguing here is that Russell WAS the system. Credit Red for seeing Russell's potential, and giving the team defense over to it, but the defense was largely the same as what Russell's college team did once they got Russell. It seems it was pretty clear for Russell's coaches once they got over the fact that Russell did things you weren't supposed to do - Russell's talent and instincts made it clear that you let him do his thing, and you just used the other pieces as satellites.
Lukeem wrote:But wilt did single handled dramatically change teams offensive approach while being able to stay in the game and dominate both ends and the boards. Something that is greatly over looked with wilt is his work ethic since his demeanor suggests otherwise, but this is a man that carried dumbells in suitcases so he could work out on the road. At the same time he greatly exagerated stories of his drinking and sleeping around according to teammates in order to promote his night club. Those that have not really read up on wilt and take his persona at face value have not scratched the surface of easily one of if not the greatest athlete of all time
Various things here:
-Wilt's stamina was certainly a huge positive, although it is pretty clear that coaches wanted him to play less simply because they could see when he became tired and they could see when he took possessions off.
-To your notion of all around domination, I'd encourage you to read a lot more on the subject on this forum, particularly this and past projects. I understand that some of the statements you're seeing in this thread are so far away from what you expect to find in casual basketball conversation that you wonder if people here are crazy, but it's pretty much a given that there's a ton of research that has been done here, both quantitative and qualitative, that you've never seen before. The gist:
Wilt as a scorer typically didn't have great impact, simply because the offense became very predictable and his teammates became passive. It's possible that in the modern era this wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem, but it is really not disputable that if you think that Wilt scoring 50 PPG meant that the defenses he went up against were getting destroyed you are wrong.
Wilt as a defender sometimes had very strong impact, and other times he coasted. It is unfortunate that unlike Russell who had a natural instinct for how to make the most impact with his abilities, Wilt tended to gravitate more toward what he thought would give him the most attention, which is actually pretty common for athletes (Russell is the abnormal one on this front).
However when we talk about Wilt playing great defense, it's important to realize that these guys had two very different bodies, and so when people talking about Wilt playing a defensive role that approximated Russell in certain years, you need to understand that that language is being used for the benefit of people who wouldn't have understood the details. The reality is that while Wilt was stronger and could reach a higher max height, he was never as agile as Russell and he could never read the court like Russell. While Wilt could be one hell of a deterrent to anyone trying to get a shot close to the net, he was not able to cover the large swaths of court space Russell was.
-Re: work ethic, demeanor, lying about nightlife. You need to put these things together to get a holistic picture of the man. Fundamentally, Wilt cared about what the public thought of him excessively, and so he would do things that he thought would add to his legend. He lifted weights a ton, because he wanted to emphasize how strong he was, but basketball-wise, he was already stronger than anyone else so there were definitely far better things he could have done with his time.
Then there's things like his chase of high FG% & assists after he'd become known already as the volume scoring key. In theory these are wonderful things, but when you all but refuse to shoot against Nate Thurmond because you don't want to risk lowering your FG%, and when you avoid making passes to players who drive because even if they score you won't get credited with an assist, you chip away substantially at your impact.
Most tragically in my mind, you have him so badly not wanting to be seen as a brute, that he'd focus on adding finesse to his game, even when that was clearly not good for his team. Wilt had a beautiful looking finger roll that was far more likely to miss than a typical lay up. He used Globetrotter like stuff moving the ball all around theoretically to confuse his man, but in reality he just made it easier for another defender to steal the ball. If he had not been so insecure, and perhaps if he had seen winning at basketball as something more important than he did, he would not have been doing these things.
But of course, basketball in the end, isn't that important. It is just a game, and especially back then, it was a very minor sport compared to today and Wilt understandably saw himself as the greatest physical specimen in humanity. In some ways it's quite understandable why Wilt would have priorities very different from what we basketball nuts would have liked, but here we are, judging basketball, and so it matters not whether he slept with more women than Genghis Kahn or whether he was the best beach volleyball player in the world, or whether he could lift 1000 lbs in this context.
