What separates Wilt & KG?

[Sharifani_San]

amazing how some have the audacity to say which statistics are better than others, or go as far as saying you shouldn't rely on those (basic) statistics and instead rely on our (advanced) statistics. And any other type of evidence? Well if its not a number, then its no good.

[tsherkin]

That's a cop-out comment though. We know that a lot of the basic stats are riddled with flaws that have been explained ad nauseum. PPG is a classic example of this and only ignorance (willful or innocent) or intentional intellectual dishonesty would ever permit someone to make a comparison featuring this as a prominent element.

Video analysis is good and offers supplementary value... But like any other medium of examination, the analyst is subject to issues of sample size, confirmation bias and the like. With Wilt, video analysis is extremely limited, most especially for his Sixers years and before. Consequently, such analysis can't be taken too seriously since there is no way to confirm consistent relevance in the findings...

It isn't an issue of picking and choosing what suits am argument, it is about consistent application of principles of logic and rationality.

[Wizenheimer]

That's a cop-out comment though. We know that a lot of the basic stats are riddled with flaws that have been explained ad nauseum. PPG is a classic example of this and only ignorance (willful or innocent) or intentional intellectual dishonesty would ever permit someone to make a comparison featuring this as a prominent element.

Video analysis is good and offers supplementary value... But like any other medium of examination, the analyst is subject to issues of sample size, confirmation bias and the like. With Wilt, video analysis is extremely limited, most especially for his Sixers years and before. Consequently, such analysis can't be taken too seriously since there is no way to confirm consistent relevance in the findings...

It isn't an issue of picking and choosing what suits am argument, it is about consistent application of principles of logic and rationality.

that last part is especially true. It's also one of the easiest rules to violate. I know I do it sometimes when looking at numbers

the application of logic is also really easy to abandon. Again, unless I watch what I'm doing, I'll find my own bias creeping into my thinking

for instance, one very common refrain when comparing players' from Wilt's era to today is that the pace was much faster back then giving a significant volume advantage to those older-era players. It's true. But sometimes it seems people really overestimate how much of a statistical bump that gives. An example would be Wilt's rebounding numbers. The highest scoring team Wilt has played on was probably playing on the order of something like a 20% faster pace. However, for those year he spent on the Lakers, they were probably in the realm of 10-20% faster paced, at the most.

Wilt averaged 23 rebounds a game for his career. The two highest modern players are Dennis Rodman and Dwight Howard, both of whom have averages of around 13 a game. Give a 20% bump to their averages and they still would only average less then 16 a game. Wilt averaged 7 more a game then their adjusted number

of course, the next rationalization is pointing to Wilt's career avg of 45.8 minutes a game. His number were high because he played so many minutes. Well, that true but it conveniently ignores some modern 'axioms' about BB. Those being that it's pretty much accepted that a player's production rates and efficiency will drop if he plays over 40 minutes a game. It's also another modern axiom that playing a big man that much just about guarantees injury. Especially for a big who tops out in the high 200's for weigh.

Well, not only did Wilt play all those minutes at a high level, he did so when the game was much faster paced. And he wasn't loafing on a lot of possessions either. Furthermore, Wilt played 14 seasons and in 11 of those seasons, he either played every game (7 times) or missed just 1 game. He was ones of the most durable big men ever. But of course, that is quite often used against him in statistical arguments

[Sharifani_San]

That's a cop-out comment though. We know that a lot of the basic stats are riddled with flaws that have been explained ad nauseum. PPG is a classic example of this and only ignorance (willful or innocent) or intentional intellectual dishonesty would ever permit someone to make a comparison featuring this as a prominent element.

but we don't make it a prominent element, though a very good supplementary one.

Video analysis is good and offers supplementary value... But like any other medium of examination, the analyst is subject to issues of sample size, confirmation bias and the like. With Wilt, video analysis is extremely limited, most especially for his Sixers years and before. Consequently, such analysis can't be taken too seriously since there is no way to confirm consistent relevance in the findings...

It isn't an issue of picking and choosing what suits am argument, it is about consistent application of principles of logic and rationality.

Yes, it is an issue of picking and choosing what suits an argument, I have never seen an argument that using consistent logic is the most appropriate method of analysis (ie deductive vs. inductive, for example), by THAT logic anyone who relies on a priori, deductive logic alone has a valid argument. Yet we know this is anything but the case. In any case, anyone pretending that their biases somehow disappear with the use of advanced statistics is either a liar or a fool, no offense to you, I'm simply just saying that as a matter of fact. Mainstream economics, for example, is riddled with this kind of problem.

Furthermore, there is plenty of problems with the advanced statistics we use, but we ignore them because the argument goes implicitly that we go with what we've got. So in essence, lets believe things that we know are less trustworthy (or that can't be applied to an individual on a particular team with any degree of reliability) over things that are trustworthy but whose validity in terms of consistency to today's time is more questionable. Furthermore, by whose standards can we say we'll accept or won't accept statements by former players or others? At least I take what they say, look at what others say, look at the evidence, and come to a conclusion. There is a growing chorus of pseudoscientific inquiry eschewing any sort of qualitative analysis in favor of what they think is more scientific analysis in statistics. Though I won't deny those statistics tell us something, to use THEM as a primary method of analysis is also pseudoscientific. Yet that is what many people on this website do without fear of retaliation wrt their argument.

and although you defend the use of those statistics, you yourself never rely on it alone. I know you don't because i've been reading your comments for a long time. But you also give a pass to those that do. You know who they are. The main arguments against Wilt come not from former coaches, former teammates, former adversaries, turnover statistics, etc, they come from the misuse of advanced statistics, for example one poster just showed how there was a huge difference from 1964 to 1965. Rather than questioning what may have happened to Wilt or whether it was really even attributable to him, its used as their #1 overriding evidence that Wilt did not perform the way his supporters say he did. Of course this isn't evidence to suggest one player is better than another, but they can use it as such using that one metric alone. If and when they do so, they show their biases.

[ElGee]

You didn't answer the question: What are you basing your opinion of him on?

The large amount of footage I've seen, the numbers, the books I've read, and the stories I've seen.

So three things guide your opinion of Wilt:

(1) Footage
(2) Statistics
(3) Stories

The footage is extremely limited. The statistics are limited. The stories are conflicting at times (and we know, sometimes unreliable). So why are you so dogmatic about where people rank Wilt Chamberlain?

If I had to guess, I'd say it's your over reliance on individual points and rebounds. It's interesting that you quoted me in another thread today but you either didn't understand the point I was making or you misrepresented it. You seem to be under the impression that scoring and rebounding creates a de facto basketball god, and that it's up to others to provide evidence that such scoring and rebounding isn't as valuable as it appears. It's actually quite the opposite: scoring and rebounding are correlated to basketball success, but because of the way game actions have been (incompletely) tracked for years, we have no idea how a player scored those points or grabbed those rebounds.

**The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate why someone IS a basketball god.
**The burden of proof is not on someone to demonstrate why a guy with good raw stat ISN'T a basketball god.

What we care about is how much Global Impact a player has on offense and defense. For defense, people historically had zero information to inform them about this. It took 50 years (30 if you count guys like Del Harris' coaching observations) before people started to realize basketball was a possession game. It also took baseball over 100 years to realize that OBS is a significantly more important stat than BA. Big deal! Sometimes groups are slow to catch on. This retroactively changed how individuals were viewed in baseball...and now in basketball. I'd like to think if they had realgm in 1962 that I would have been on there thinking scientifically about pace and efficiency, but the folks at UCLA were lazy and didn't dial up the Net for another 7 years.

It seems to me then that your incredulity is rooted entirely then in the raw statistics of Wilt Chamberlain the individual, without regard for how Wilt Chamberlain affected Global Offense and Defense. Again, this is inverted causality -- the challenge is to figure out how much Wilt impact the game globally, and the limited statistics we have are a piece in that puzzle. The task is not to start by assuming Wilt's statistics make him dominant and adjust from there based on limited evidence and old anecdotes.

Finally, I rank Wilt Chamberlain 11th all-time. I rank Kevin Garnett 7th. That's based on my evaluation of career value. It doesn't include salary, economic climates, loyalty to a team or an era adjustment for medicine (modern players seem to play longer). When Wilt retired in 1973, I had him 2nd. In 1983, 3rd (Kareem). In 1993, 6th (Jordan, Bird, Magic). There is nothing too far out of the ordinary there, even with more accurate information about Wilt's teams than Joe Newspaper had in 1975. So consider for a second that your up-in-arms reaction to these rankings might just have to do with the changing of a perceived status quo, without ever really thinking about the validity of that status quo. As if players from 1993 to 2013 have been incapable of usurping Chamberlain...because I think 5 of them did. And a 6th is coming.

Do you think I'm a Wilt hater because I think he's better than 3,810 of the 3,821 players in NBA history (99.7% percentile). Because when I evaluate players, I don't focus on negatives, or adjust from common perceptions, or anything of the sort -- I simply try and evaluate how good they are at basketball. If that makes me a hater, then brother, I hate everyone.

[Sharifani_San]

That's a lot of talk without substance, why don't you try rebutting the 6 pages of stuff I mentioned on this thread instead? I've already made some arguments to why your use of impact statistics ignores other things, things which suggest some people aren't being intellectually honest.

I'm also curious as to what stories are conflicting? And why treat these conflicting stories as something bad instead of good? You sound as if you're doing physics instead of trying to see how a human being performed on the court. Ie, doing a physical science instead of a social science. Have you ever given consideration to that fact?

[tsherkin]

but we don't make it a prominent element, though a very good supplementary one.

PPG is about as close to useless as any number can get because of how many different things which influence it that are independent of the players and their ability to impact an actual game. Pace comes to mind, for example; the raw number of possessions you have per game is most certainly going to affect something like that. Presence or absence of a three-point shot, minutes played, etc, etc.

Wilt's career scoring average, his raw PPG, is 30.1 ppg.

His PER36 average, though, is 23.6, because of era-inflated minutes that will never be replicated in the differing leagues moving forward. That's one specific and relevant example, though there are many, many others. Competition must be discussed at some point, too, though obviously Wilt is an example of a player who transitioned well from one era to the next (much as did Russell). The differing defensive rules and the 3pt line would change his impact, though, as it has done to others, and it certainly makes raw comparisons on the basis of team PPG and the like mostly irrelevant.

That's kind of my point, PPG has no utility in this kind of conversation.

In any case, anyone pretending that their biases somehow disappear with the use of advanced statistics is either a liar or a fool, no offense to you, I'm simply just saying that as a matter of fact. Mainstream economics, for example, is riddled with this kind of problem.

I'm not sure you listened to what I was saying. Obviously, INCLUSION of video analysis is relevant. Specifically for player evaluation, it helps us examine a player's isolation scoring abilities, form on his jumper, etc. It's very valuable to a scout trying to determine specific contextual hurdles to a player.

In terms of the evaluation of their performance, it can tell us about effort level, the way in which they were defended, etc. If you track things appropriately, you can get a better sense of their ability to handle double-teams and what-not as well.

However, the statistical angle will capture a lot of things that will not come up in the eye test, because the eyes deceive. We are vulnerable to confirmation bias in both statistical and video analysis, but video analysis comes at the price of exposing yourself to what is typically an insufficient sample, as well. It's evident that there isn't enough video of 60s Wilt to create a good picture of his play on a consistent basis, just what highlight performances he had. There are tons of players for whom that would make them look FAR better than they ever actually were, apart from on a handful of nights during their respective careers.

Furthermore, there is plenty of problems with the advanced statistics we use, but we ignore them because the argument goes implicitly that we go with what we've got.

That's an overly broad generalization. If you're talking about PER, win shares and the other numbers in the "one number captures all" group, sure, you're right. If you're talking about team-based performance metrics, that number of flaws narrows considerably and most are willing to talk through them, and/or support them with corroborating evidence.

Furthermore, by whose standards can we say we'll accept or won't accept statements by former players or others?

On the basis that most of them prove to be foaming morons when it comes to intelligent basketball analysis, more prone than your average RealGMer to be subject to narratives, nostalgia bias and so forth? Hasn't it become clear from the parade of commentators, coaches and analysts coming from playing careers that most of them say nothing of substance and repeat arguments that have been thoroughly and irrevocably debunked for years and years? At some point, you try the "where there's smoke, there's fire" theorum, but most former players don't know their ass from a hole in the ground in terms of analysis. Moment to moment instinct and reactive ability which can make a player great on the court do not necessarily make for a qualified analyst.

That's appeal to authority, which is a CLASSIC logical fallacy.

and although you defend the use of those statistics, you yourself never rely on it alone.

Of course not; I'm an advocate for mixed analysis because you need multiple perspectives. There is no singular angle of examination that will prove significant. The flaws of all angles must be considered.

In this specific context, though, there isn't enough of a body of evidence for video to be of any serious use and the yawning chasm in terms of era differences makes any debate of this nature highly subjective. That leaves with with what raw facts we have, and that means a primarily statistically-based route of examination so that we can avoid repeating a lot of the old myths that dominate.

The main arguments against Wilt come not from former coaches, former teammates, former adversaries, turnover statistics, etc, they come from the misuse of advanced statistics,

Hmmm, I wouldn't agree with that. The idea that Wilt's volume scoring was a problem is something that's dominated forever. Even subjectively and through the late 80s and early 90s, people talked about how it was basically impossible to win the title as a scoring champion... And true to form, the only guys who've done it are Kareem, Jordan and Shaq, in that order (once, six times and once, respectively).

Volume scoring is a problem a lot of the time, often a symptom of weak depth and/or poor coaching. In Wilt's case, it was more the former, and what the stats are telling is is that a player who uses that many possessions isn't really doing a lot for his team's offense that spreading ball around wouldn't have done. Obviously, this is superior to the Iverson solution, but I think it's readily apparent that Wilt was a superior player when he shot less, passed more and focused more on defense... much of which was enabled by his diminished shooting volume (and by extension, lower scoring average).

That one is something that has an element of consistency not just within the player's own career arc, but with subjective narrative elements that have repeated throughout the league.

for example one poster just showed how there was a huge difference from 1964 to 1965. Rather than questioning what may have happened to Wilt or whether it was really even attributable to him, its used as their #1 overriding evidence that Wilt did not perform the way his supporters say he did. Of course this isn't evidence to suggest one player is better than another, but they can use it as such using that one metric alone. If and when they do so, they show their biases.

That's one way to look at it.

The other is this:

In 64, Wilt played 80 games. He posted PER36 stats of 28.8 pts, 17.4 reb and 3.9 ast on 53.7% TS.

That scoring efficiency looks pretty bad by modern standards, given that he was taking 22.4 FGA36, but the league average was 48.5% (so he was +5.2%), and his TS% was brought down because on his 9.9 FTA36, he shot a paltry 53.1% FT. Much like Shaq, he exerted impact beyond his raw TS as a result of the foul pressure he created, though obviously Shaq dominated FG% to a greater extent through the majority of his career (with Wilt matching Shaq's range a few times as his volume diminished).

So what we're seeing, at least from the angle of efficiency, is that on HUMONGOUS volume, he was rocking elite efficiency deviation from league average. Wilt took 29.5% of San Fran's FGAs that season, which is a pretty large proportion of their offense. They were dead last in points per game, -3.3 compared to league average. They were at 43.8% FG, which was +0.5% over league average. They were, unsurprisingly, dead last in FT% because of his brick-laying... but it's not like Attles, Rodgers or Meschery were tearing it up from the line either. They were second-last in FT/FGA... which is a bit of a repeat of the last sentence. Wilt was drawing at .442 FTA/FGA, which is pretty darned good, Duncan-esque. And realistically, when you consider his shooting volume and how many borked shots he had to take to float that volume, he was doing a little better than that. They were the bottom of the second middle third of the league in FGA.

We're not seeing the picture of a hugely efficient team here. San Fran was the third-worst team in the league for team TS%, posting 47.7%.

This is pretty narrow analysis, first of all, since I'm focusing exclusively on scoring efficiency for Wilt and the Warriors, but what we're seeing here is that San Fran really wasn't winning games on the basis of offensive brilliance. Even from this fairly narrow aperture of examination, we can see that they didn't score a lot of points relative to their peers, they left tons of points at the line, they didn't score efficiently relative to their peers and they didn't leverage pace the way the Celtics did (second-most PPG in the league, worst scoring efficiency, I think what they were up to was fairly clear). The Warriors were second in raw total rebounds, though that was Wilt's worst rebounding season until he moved to Los Angeles.

In any case, what does that tell us? If the Warriors weren't winning on the basis of offense (which they evidently weren't), they were doing so with defense. They led the league in opponent PPG and their point differential was 5.1. That kind of separation between points scored and points allowed is pretty impressive, good enough for them...

To underperform their expected Win/Loss totals by 5 wins, winning only 48 games. Now, eW/L has its flaws and is no gospel stat. Often, teams underperform due to injuries, weird schedule blocks, blah blah blah. But 5 games out of an 80-game season, well that's 6% of the total schedule, so it's a non-trivial number of games and when you look, the Warriors were not actually riddled with injuries, which removes one of those elements from the equation and thus at least flags the performance was one worth further consideration.

We aren't seeing meaningful team impact from Wilt there offensively, to a point. He certainly had some impact, but how much? You're looking at the NBA's scoring champion, 36.9 ppg over 46.1 mpg that season, so where was the impact? Well, raw volume is one thing, but ultimately, you're still talking about a guy who was scoring at the equivalent level of a 29 ppg scorer playing 36 minutes a night... which is great (especially with that kind of efficiency compared to his peers), but isn't anything we haven't seen since on multiple occasions, and there's a diminishing return to how much a single scorer can do for his team, and a point where excessive volume actually marginalizes the rest of the roster. Team performance markers are pretty clear on this one.

Compare and contrast.

Oscar Robertson on the Royals that year had his team leading the league in scoring average (+3.7 over league average), and in FG% (+2% over league average), and they were 3rd in the league in FT%.

He himself scored 31.4 PPG (25.1 PTS36), but did so at 57.6% TS while also producing 8.8 AST36 and adding his customary strong backcourt rebounding. When we look at offensive impact, I think we're seeing that Oscar was doing a better job of volume scoring than Wilt, while dominating the ball to greater effect for his teammates. It's one of the undersold elements of Oscar's career, actually, something that we've had the fortune to see brought up in the various RPOY and Top-100 projects, etc. He was doing some very fine, highly impressive things with those Royals offenses, outperforming Wilt offensively in many seasons. Obviously lagging behind in defensive impact, but that's what we've come to understand is the norm from bigs... they're not best-used as volume shooting weapons except in the most extreme outlier cases, and even then, guard-driven offense is still frequently better.

So again, we see that the narrative behind Wilt was driven from his raw scoring volume... which is overstated because of the fact that he only sat for around 2 minutes per game. His scoring rate wasn't as thunderously impressive when you consider that, and the overall offensive performance of the Warriors didn't merit any kind of serious GOAT discussion on the basis of his contributions there, raw volume aside. That said, I think his impact on the other end of the floor comes through nicely (though playing with Thurmond didn't hurt!).

Now, we turn our eyes to 65...

Wilt played 38 games for the Warriors. Passed a little less, shot a little more, wasn't quite as effective at either and was logging 38.9 PTS36 before he was traded. He shot WAY worse from the line (41.6% on 10.3 FTA36)... but he was taking 33.6 FGA/g over that part of the season, the third-highest shooting volume of his career. He was chucking up a storm. His scoring efficiency actually maintained, rose a tad over 64, but that kind of shooting volume is destructive. Consider that 33.6 FGA/g on a team which took roughly 103.1 FGA/g is ~ 32.6% if their total attempts, and that becomes slightly higher when you account for the time he was off the floor, turnovers (which aren't recorded for that period), offensive rebounds (also not recorded) and the like. He had an astronomically high usage rate, and that has not historically correlated well with great offensive contribution. We have seen for decade after decade that titanic single scorers aren't the answer, with basically the short list of exceptions being Jordan and, to a much lesser extent, Kobe. Balance offenses are typically way better until you have such an outlier level of offensive efficiency as to be a once-a-generation (or rarer) player. Wilt was not such a player in terms of shooting at those volumes, which is perhaps the biggest difference between him and Jordan as volume scoring threats, I shall add hastily. Chamberlain was CLEARLY much more well-suited to the role of passing hub, decoy offense and defensive focus, something at which bigs typically excel at far beyond the level of wing players.

The Warriors got a lot worse on D and, as a result, their MOV (and SRS, etc) declined considerably. The defensive impact was pretty clear, and I don't think many will argue that.

Offensively, the Warriors in 64 rocked 107.7 ppg on 43.8% FG, 35.3 FTA/g at 63.8% FT. 47.7% TS.

A year later, post-trade:

105.8 ppg, 40.3% FG, 35.6 FTA/g, 64.0% FT. 44.6% TS.

Is there a perceptible decline? Yup. They clearly lost something when his high-volume, high-FG% shots were taken away, and though they drew fouls more effectively and shot slightly better at the line, they weren't able to totally account for that. Of course, if you take almost any player away from the team without any kind of sensible replacement, then you're going to see a significant drop and I don't think anyone was suggesting here that Wilt was a scrub. His departure was always going to leave a mark and the trade was not a good one. Trading superstars rarely ends well for the host team giving up the star.

Consider the details:

Sixers receive: Wilt Chamberlain
Warriors receive: Paul Neumann, Connie Dierking, Lee Shaffer and $150k. Shaffer didn't report, he retired.

So they got a guard and a 6'9 center. Dierking was a journeyman who did nothing of consequence until he went to, drum roll please, the Royals, late in Oscar's career there. He then promptly fell off as soon as Oscar was traded to Milwaukee, though in deference, he was also 34 and started to have injury problems, retiring a short time later. Dierking was a pretty good rebounder... about 2/3s of what Wilt provided on a per-minute basis, but was a foul factory who played with them for 30 games before going to Cincinnati in 66. Not exactly a comparable tier of player, or really anything near. You're talking about maybe a replacement-level player at the 5 and a guy who had a STIRRING 6-year career in the NBA, as a weak, inefficient guard.

So they got chunk for Wilt and they dropped off, yes, but the impact level from an offensive standpoint was a lot less than what most people realize when they consider his raw scoring totals. Impact was there, as must inevitably be the case with a competent offensive player (and Wilt was more than just competent), but people get overly fond of shiny volume numbers on a regular basis.

Meantime, peripheral, limp-wristed effort will make it clear that Wilt played better in lower-volume roles, as his time as a Sixer and Laker will confirm. That matches pretty well with a lot of other things in NBA history, some quantitative, others not so much. I think it's pretty clear at this point that Wilt's greatest utility did not, as the usual myths indicate, come from his offensive value but rather from his impact as a defender and rebounder. He was not altogether different from Russell in that he was one of the first to be a shot-blocking presence, and he (like Bill) dominated the defensive glass, which certainly helped.

That's my take on the matter. I have never believed in the notion that excessively-high-volume scorers are a good thing. I was never a fan of Iverson (for that among MANY other reasons), nor was I ever a huge believer in McGrady (who never really approached the level he played at in 03 outside of that one season) and I'm not a huge Kobe fan either. Lots of people wanna Be Like Mike, but unless you're deviating big-time from league-average scoring efficiency, it's not usually the best way to do things. Kobe's the closest, though, and in his day, he was damned good, so that's something. But even he needed to be bolstered by some serious talent in the frontcourt (and it's not like MJ himself escaped without having some high-quality talent around him). That's something of a tangent, but my point is that people overrate raw PPG without any regard for the environment in which it was produced or for the quality of that production compared to similar performances... or lower-volume performances with better passing and/or defense. Tim Duncan is perennially underrated because the casual fan is a toolbag only entranced by dunks and flashy numbers without regard for actual impact (or, Gods forbid, pace...), but he's one of the best players we've seen even still.

Anyway, now that I'm really rambling, I think you've seen my point. There's plenty of weight to the idea that Wilt's impact as an offensive weapon was smaller than the way it is typically made out to be, though at the same time, I feel there's a corollary increase in the emphasis of his defensive impact.

[WhateverBro]

This is an exceptional post and really outlines why I created this thread. **Again, please note that this comparison was not meant to be insulting, on contrary, I believe others share this same thought process.

I'd like to think that in almost a century later or so we can now use modern advancements + techniques to revisit exactly how the Titantic sank and other damages caused without being there, we can revisit Wilt's career and do the same.

It seems to me that both players shared similarities throughout there respected careers but the Wilt camp is proclaiming that higher numbers mean a better player which is what I am questioning here.

My conclusion of Wilt as of right now was that he was a much better impactful defensive player then an offensive one, regardless of what raw statistic's show you from the boxscore. But it is trying to articulate that overall to the fanbase that is challenging.

I realize era translation is extremely hard but let me poise another question here which is always brought up by the anti-KG crowd about his career and a reason why many do not value his overall player impact and contribution.

Poster's criticize KG's inability individually to propel his Minny teams to get into the post season altogether or make a deep within. (we can leave out the variables for now). Many of these some poster's translate impact into playoff success and ultimately leading your team to a title.

So in a 8-9 team league, where you are the most physically impressive specimen the world has ever seen during that time period, able to average 50 ppg, block double digit shots, pull down double digit rebounds, have a higher percentage of making the post season, shouldn't anything less then a title win given the circumstances here open eyes, regardless of the individual accolades?

Now 2 things:

#1) I certainly do not use titles to determine who was the better player here
#2) I also realize no one individual can win a title alone

But when I think about what the Wilt camp uses as values to hold his ranking so high, the more it just doesn't make sense to me.

For someone as talented as Wilt, making it to 7 finals, he only won when he focused much more on what my initial thought of him was, and that was defensively first. And he had many more opportunity to get it right then KG ever did.

If you want to argue overall team talent, sure both have an argument there. Coaching, ok as well, but what I do not get is why KG gets much more disrespect for lack of post season then Wilt gets for not actually winning and breaking up some of Russell's rings (much like Magic and Bird did to each other).

And if you are going to make a claim of Wilt the GOAT, top 3 or whatever, how in the world is this being justified given his circumstance. It doesn't matter what era you played in for someone to be able to point out actual impact made and it just so happens that this is the direction sports has moved into moreso then before.

Now move ahead, KG goes to Boston, like say Wilt to the 76érs, and guess what happens, both win. Another similarity between the two players except KG finally has a team where he can demonstrate his Russell impersonation and anchors an all-time defense for discussion. He is able to fully show what his true impact is if given a team around, and let's be honest, these weren't the best players the league had to offer but certainly a welcomed upgrade.

He didn't have to change his game for the team to mesh and much like Russell did, demonstrated ridiculous defensive impact which just doesn't seem as pretty as wehn you put up 30 ppg but it cannot be undervalued by any means.

So what does it matter if you score less by era because you are impacting the game much more so defensively?

If prime/peak KG was averaging 30ppg and everything else stayed the same, would this change the perspective of him compared to Wilt?

Because he wasn't a volume scorer, by design, but became the only real offensive consistent threat during his T-Wolve days, and it wasn't on a Wilt level, this makes him a lesser player?

Early Wilt certainly didn't do enough for me to truly consider him a top 5 GOAT candidate. Regardless if this is the correct analysis or not but having 5 title opportunities and walking away empty usually means something is wrong. And revisiting now, what happened back then, it is clear that his numbers however inflated in comparision didn't get the job done that many criticize KG for not having enough of.

So then it could be clear that even if KG increased his individual scoring, the same result may have happened given identical team make-up. So Wilt should not get a pass for this having a much easier path/percentage to make the finals to begin with (if we are being equal here)

To me, KG's lack of post season success before his trade to Boston isn't any worse then Wilt's 5 finals with 0 rings. However you want to slice up impact, team, coaching neither player is in GOAT talks with me.

Now, for me, it is the fact that Wilt gets traded shortly after winning a title and again goes to LA but you fail to see a first year KG in Boston impact, again. Nba luck happens, injuries and such but Boston was a legit title threat 4 straight years with a downsliding KG and team. Doesn't this show KG's a much better portible player here? I mean, what are the chances that Boston mgmt just knew, Óh yeah, this time will just gel, no doubt when so many have tried this.

Going back here, poster's rank KG in the top 10-15 as they do Wilt so there should be no up in arms about this comparison here. I do think Wilt's earlier years deserve more criticizing in his overall career but that seems to be dismissed by gaudy stats and newspaper clippings of the biggest center stage performer the nba had ever seen.

Would people view a 8-9 team league starring MJ the same way? Both lost earlier on but only 1 really had the chance to taste the gold while loosing. To me, if you are good enough to make the finals as a lower seed, you can then show your impact by elevating and winning a few times. No excuses needed.

When KG got the chance, he didn't disappoint and helped keep things very competitive. He won 2 rebounding titles as a PF, while always having to anchor the teams offense (which he wasn't). He has great longevity and an overall defensive prowess to me, greater then Wilts. Wilt was just a more vertical, striaght up man to man player. KG could just impact more of the floor, like Russell could.

So yeah, I do not see it. If you want to say KG couldn't lead your team to the post season or a title as the man, well how much better did Wilt do at this given he made the trip 5 times prior in a much shortened team league and playoff series run. Both won with an upgraded cast, yet only one player changed his basketball philosophy from what it was. KG was a much better ball handlier, he had far better range with a much nicer shot. He was better from the line and capable of anchoring ridiculous defenses while himself able to guard much more positions on the court. To me he is more portable and just understands the game at a higher level.

Good post. I know I'm just nitpicking but he actually won four straight rebounding titles.

As for this thread, damn, this is why I love this section of RealGM. So many interesting point of views and my view of Wilt is actually starting to shift, even more than it has done throughout my years on RealGM.

[Sharifani_San]

What you highlighted via 1964 to 1965 is shining evidence of exactly what I am talking about. You use the statistics, but then don't question what anyone actually said during the season. Why was Wilt traded? In fact, in that season Wilt was hospitalized early in the season and was sluggish throughout, ie he was not playing well, and here's the kicker: he knew it. He knew he was sluggish, and if you read any biographies of him you'd understand that he was "down in the dumps". Warriors doctors were telling Frank Mileau that Wilt would be dead due to his heart at the end of the year. Look at what Alex Hannum himself told reporters in 1972 right before game 4 or 5 vs. the Knicks: Wilt had a heart attack, and was expected to die.

My argument all along is that you can't use statistics alone. Now again this is not an argument against you, as you were just providing me with an example. But although I have pointed this out to other posters, they continue showing his impact in this season and in his trade to the Lakers (because these are the only moments you can delineate individual impact from team impact to some extent) as evidence Wilt has this kind of impact THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER. What happened in 1969? Forget the statistics for a moment. Wilt, a perennial 3 time MVP, dropped to becoming nowhere near the MVP. Clearly this year was markedly different from prior years. The fact is that something else is at play here. Clearly Wilt was not having a good season this year, and as to why he wasn't having that good season can be debated. Those that state, however, through advanced statistics that this is the impact Wilt always exhibited are clearly ignoring the MVP selections, for example. And I joke not, the main 2-3 Wilt detractors here frequently use this season as justification for his overall impact throughout his career.

Anyway, for reasons I've already mentioned, I don't think impact is the only measure to use to judge a player. Obviously a lot of it comes down to how a team is coached and what roles players have. I know you agree with this, but I'm just saying thats just as important if we want to talk about what a player can do and how we could hypothetically rank them. Obviously Wilt had a few too many failures from 1968-1970, particularly in those game 7s, and a mediocre regular season in 1971 to be the GOAT. But his detractors go way too far, way too far in their critiques, using those times that he switched teams as evidence of overall impact.

[Sharifani_San]

Anyway, now that I'm really rambling, I think you've seen my point. There's plenty of weight to the idea that Wilt's impact as an offensive weapon was smaller than the way it is typically made out to be, though at the same time, I feel there's a corollary increase in the emphasis of his defensive impact.

Again, I can agree with this as a general statement against volume scoring, but if we want to use years where he was injured and not in the right condition to extrapolate to prior seasons, you will again see me clearly disagreeing. It also says nothing of Wilt's season in either 1960 or 1962, where he still took Boston to game 6-7 and lost by 2 points in each season (in fact, I think in game 5 1960 he was unable to use one of his hands, i can't remember the details). Clearly in 1962 Wilt had decided to change roles in the playoffs, which explains his 15 FGA in game 7 and why we can't use his regular season stats to say he had a dropoff in the playoffs.

[Sharifani_San]

btw have I ever mentioned that I absolutely disagree with use of PER36 for across era measurements or even within-era measurements? For example, Tim Duncan is given the ball on many if not most of the offensive possessions when he returns to the game. Clearly for someone who is in the game all 48 minutes they will not be rocking that sort of usage while they are in the game the entire time.

[tsherkin]

Clearly for someone who is in the game all 48 minutes they will not be rocking that sort of usage while they are in the game the entire time.

That doesn't seem to have been the case with Wilt, though. Unless you think he frantically threw up shots and grabbed possessions earlier in his time on court, then I can't really take that sort of comment seriously. Even what video evidence there is doesn't suggest that he changed his usage patterns much over time on the court.

Furthermore, when you're looking at minutes played and comparing to players in other eras, you have to account for those unreasonable minutes, because they were clearly the product of the era and would never happen now. We barely see 40+ mpg players anymore, certainly nothing like what they did to guys in the 60s, and of course rate is far more important than raw volume output anyway. PER36 is just a rudimentary starting point, it's obviously a somewhat arbitrary cut-off that roughly simulates the expected minutes for a high-quality starter rather than being an absolute value. Of course, we could reduce it to per-possession output, save that turnovers and offensive rebounds aren't available for the misty recesses of NBA history, back when Wilt actually played.

Again, I can agree with this as a general statement against volume scoring, but if we want to use years where he was injured and not in the right condition to extrapolate to prior seasons, you will again see me clearly disagreeing.

Except that his production was exceedingly similar to what he'd done in other years, where he was putatively healthy... and he'd actually noticeably increased his shooting volume in the first half of the 65 season compared to the season before. He wasn't seeing a significant impact to his statistical production in either 54 OR 65 compared to any other season, so that comment doesn't have a ton of weight to it.

why we can't use his regular season stats to say he had a dropoff in the playoffs.

No, that's not true. You can use contextual evidence to make a point for a given season, but Wilt's problems extended well past a single season. He was consistently less productive as a volume scorer in the playoffs than in the regular season because of the nature of the postseason and the opponents he was facing. A single instance of a game where he changed his role to accommodate an injury or whatever doesn't really alter that reality.

What you highlighted via 1964 to 1965 is shining evidence of exactly what I am talking about. You use the statistics, but then don't question what anyone actually said during the season. Why was Wilt traded? In fact, in that season Wilt was hospitalized early in the season and was sluggish throughout, ie he was not playing well, and here's the kicker: he knew it. He knew he was sluggish, and if you read any biographies of him you'd understand that he was "down in the dumps". Warriors doctors were telling Frank Mileau that Wilt would be dead due to his heart at the end of the year. Look at what Alex Hannum himself told reporters in 1972 right before game 4 or 5 vs. the Knicks: Wilt had a heart attack, and was expected to die.

I've read all sorts of Wilt biographies. I also read the Warriors owner saying that Wilt was not an easy man to love and that he was easy to hate, that people showed up to see him lose. I've read all sorts of quotes on a wide range of topics secondary to Wilt. You're assuming that I'm not factoring these into my analysis, but the point is that for any individual season, for ANY given player, you can come up with a bunch of excuses, but the production numbers and team impact seem to generally tell the same story apart from a few outlier seasons... most of which didn't coincide with his volume-scoring years, and the one that did not really translating into GOAT-level offensive impact (and since he was rookie, no one will hold that against him).

I wouldn't say that him switching teams is a problem, but the point that Doc MJ seemed to be making and the one that I was following along is that Wilt's best impact wasn't coming from offense, but from defense and he didn't have the internal drive and understanding to realize that. He kind of did what he was told, which is a commendable attribute within tolerance, but he didn't really impose his will upon the game until and unless he was shown how to do it. He was a little too happy-go-lucky, a little too Vince Carter, to to speak. Focused and guided by a more dominant personality, he was a force of nature. 67 Wilt and 72 Wilt were prime examples of what he could do in a more background offensive role while focusing on other elements of his game, but taken as a whole?

Wilt is one of the GOAT talents, and regardless of what is said, remains one of the GOAT players, but there is nothing wrong with looking at his level of impact relative to his team compared to his GOAT-debate peers and wondering why he falls short of their level of impact on a more regular basis. That's all Doc was saying.

Wilt's career is one that is dominated by hyperbole. He was an expansive personality, a larger-than-life individual, and the talk over his achievements is exactly that, hyperbole, larger than the actual impact it had. 50 ppg, 100 points, those are the big markers, but neither of them were positive things. 50 is like 37 is like 35, the high-water marks for volume scorers who got better when they scored less, having scored that much to float terrible offensive teams to mediocre status as a really excellent cautionary tale for young players on the necessity of depth to team success.

Chamberlain was a great player, he really was. He has a stack of individual achievements and accolades that rank him up there with the very best and he obviously had a huge impact on the game in a variety of ways. He has to be considered one of the greatest of all-time. Not THE greatest, and certainly variable in his ranking relative to others who have come since, but he did incredible things. He's recognized as such. However, it's almost inevitable that someone whose reputation was as dominated by overstatement as was Wilt's would suffer some backlash when more information and sharper analytical approaches became available.

In his own career, he battled the "loser" label, butted up against Russell so many times that people began to diminish and question him even in the face of his mammoth statistical achievements and continued to show various traits that developed a narrative which lessened him, made him more mortal. What modern analysts are doing is simply trying to understand why those sorts of things happened, and our ability to evaluate player impact has advanced considerably since the stumbling, rudimentary and embarrassingly weak/uninformative processes involved in evaluating players prior to the contemporary period. Furthermore, the evolution of the game is a definite reality that, within certain thresholds, must be considered.

Anyway, like I and others have said: the evidence with which to work on evaluating Wilt is limited, and consequently all results are open to discussion as subjective. The quotes and such are fine, but when they don't produce a hugely tangible deviation from what he'd produced or done in other seasons, that raises some flags... both about the methods and the player, but more so the latter because the methods seem to bear out for other players with similar circumstances. Did Wilt have health issues? Sure, but it didn't stop him from doing a lot of what he'd done a season before and doing some of it better, some of it worse. His brick-laying at the line was a problem and the raw usage raw he was managing had risen, which we've seen is generally a negative thing.

Wilt was very good, but again and again it becomes clear that the seasons many seem to think represent his best years really weren't and that, as ever, casual fans/analysts make huge mistakes time and again in their analysis of players because they fall victim to convenient narratives and don't actually immerse themselves in the full details. There are plenty of tools available; when they reach conclusions that are at-odds with one another, questions must be asked and that's precisely what's happening here. If all of these other players show this level of impact in this sphere of the game, why not Wilt, with his huge raw volume numbers and the like? It takes effort to shift narratives as titanic as those with orbit Wilt, perhaps the more so because of the mystery of the inaccessible, but they will be shifted if the body of evidence remains consistent for those around him but continues to show that his impact was overstated... which seems to be the case.

[Sharifani_San]

A critique I've made time and time again is that we look for narratives when it may or may not be appropriate. Who but myself has actually made the specific critique that Wilt needs to be looked at season by season, and not as a whole? I'm the one and probably the only one who continually pushes his 1962 season as the best of all time. Had he not had a bad goaltending call against him and had Sam Jones not put that extra oomph into the shot (because Chamberlain was making up for a defensive assignment someone else on his team apparently missed and was coming after Jones like a mountain) and won on a buzzer beater, we would be talking about the greatest season of all time. And this is in a series that all observers said Boston would handily win. All this retrospective analysis is sophistry at its finest and quite frankly, mysticism by today's mystics....and though I can be careless with words, in this case I think it appropriate. I won't deny there are no excuses for him later in his career, however, for purposes of the all time list.

And, I won't deny (and have said so throughout this thread) that Wilt's role should have been more of a middle ground throughout his career, probably to average something like 28-32 ppg particularly in those earlier fast paced days. My only question is why should we blame Wilt for what is clearly a coaching problem? My god, they changed the rules for this guy, and referees were letting players get away with all sorts of abuse on him to even the playing field (by the refs OWN ADMISSION!). Why can't that be part of the discussion too?

I should also be clear: I really do agree with most of what you said, I just wish other analysts were as fair as you are.

[Doctor MJ]

Doc,
the problem with 60s ortg evaluations is that we really don't know how player like Wilt changed average (estimated) values. I mean he was great ORB and DRB player (+ probably high tournover ratio player - but more in his later days) and that changes ortg drastically.

As mentioned, it's not perfect but it's clearly better than raw PPG numbers. Also let's be clear that with any of this the danger we're talking about is misallocation of credit of offense vs defense. Nothing changes the fact that the overall SRS shift from year to year is pretty well established.

So if you want to make the argument that Wilt's offensive impact is getting underrated while his defense gets overrated that's something you can do and that certainly would be good to know, but it's not like using these numbers gives you the danger of turning the GOAT into a scrub.

[Doctor MJ]

amazing how some have the audacity to say which statistics are better than others, or go as far as saying you shouldn't rely on those (basic) statistics and instead rely on our (advanced) statistics. And any other type of evidence? Well if its not a number, then its no good.

If you understand the purpose of a given stat, how it relates to actual team impact, and the flaws in its tracking, the criticisms come naturally.

We don't use raw PPG to assess offense and defense because that doesn't factor in the pace of the game. Fast teams would get their offense terribly overrated and their defense terribly underrated. What makes a good offense is how many points you score per possession, so we want a stat that attempts to give us that information rather than one which was made without any such nuanced thought.

[Doctor MJ]

that last part is especially true. It's also one of the easiest rules to violate. I know I do it sometimes when looking at numbers

the application of logic is also really easy to abandon. Again, unless I watch what I'm doing, I'll find my own bias creeping into my thinking

for instance, one very common refrain when comparing players' from Wilt's era to today is that the pace was much faster back then giving a significant volume advantage to those older-era players. It's true. But sometimes it seems people really overestimate how much of a statistical bump that gives. An example would be Wilt's rebounding numbers. The highest scoring team Wilt has played on was probably playing on the order of something like a 20% faster pace. However, for those year he spent on the Lakers, they were probably in the realm of 10-20% faster paced, at the most.

Wilt averaged 23 rebounds a game for his career. The two highest modern players are Dennis Rodman and Dwight Howard, both of whom have averages of around 13 a game. Give a 20% bump to their averages and they still would only average less then 16 a game. Wilt averaged 7 more a game then their adjusted number

of course, the next rationalization is pointing to Wilt's career avg of 45.8 minutes a game. His number were high because he played so many minutes. Well, that true but it conveniently ignores some modern 'axioms' about BB. Those being that it's pretty much accepted that a player's production rates and efficiency will drop if he plays over 40 minutes a game. It's also another modern axiom that playing a big man that much just about guarantees injury. Especially for a big who tops out in the high 200's for weigh.

Well, not only did Wilt play all those minutes at a high level, he did so when the game was much faster paced. And he wasn't loafing on a lot of possessions either. Furthermore, Wilt played 14 seasons and in 11 of those seasons, he either played every game (7 times) or missed just 1 game. He was ones of the most durable big men ever. But of course, that is quite often used against him in statistical arguments

Wilt's minutes are amazing of course, and a valid thing to bring up in a player comparison.

I'll add in one other factor relating to what you say about pace: The availability of rebounds is not dependent only on pace. The more players are missing shots, the rebounds are available. The weak efficiency of play back then is another factor in the relative inflation of rebounds.

[Sharifani_San]

my criticisms are the veiled bias that statistics and particularly advanced statistics can provide, if its used correctly like Tsherkin uses it (and not like others use it) then I have no issues with it, but that's mostly because tsherkin naturally seems to have less skin in the game than others do. furthermore, It seems that everyone only acknowledges the subjectivity in other methods of analysis but not with statistics.

but one thing I have gotten out of this entire discussion (thankfully) is that some people just analyze GOAT players differently than I do, regardless of each players circumstance(s). At least I understand you and Elgee a little more (although I find laughable his assertion on who the onus is to provide evidence, any time one has an argument then you automatically have an onus upon you, but i digress....).

and, I think, I'm satisfied enough with this discussion (surrounding Wilt) to leave it for good. I'll probably save this link if future discussion arises.

[Doctor MJ]

A critique I've made time and time again is that we look for narratives when it may or may not be appropriate. Who but myself has actually made the specific critique that Wilt needs to be looked at season by season, and not as a whole?

Well I did just post data from each of Wilt's Warrior seasons and went through the noteworthy outlier data along with explicitly incorporating knowledge of his '64-65 health woes into it...

I'm the one and probably the only one who continually pushes his 1962 season as the best of all time.

Virtually every casual fan in history has Wilt's '62 season as his peak and as a serious contender for GOAT in history. I don't understand how you think you stand on a mountain here. This is a default opinion for anyone who doesn't side with Jordan (Jordan being the default opinion of anyone who came of age in the past 25 years).

Had he not had a bad goaltending call against him and had Sam Jones not put that extra oomph into the shot (because Chamberlain was making up for a defensive assignment someone else on his team apparently missed and was coming after Jones like a mountain) and won on a buzzer beater, we would be talking about the greatest season of all time.

A lucky bounce doesn't affect the opinion of anyone rational. If you want to call that year the GOAT, that's fine. The fact they lost a series isn't the primary issue most of us here have with it...

And this is in a series that all observers said Boston would handily win.

They said Boston would win handily because Boston was drastically superior in the regular season, which is a much bigger deal.

You might say, "Who cares about the regular season, the playoffs are what really matters.", but that would come off with more gravity if Wilt's team's actually had a tendency to upset Boston in the playoffs instead of the other way around. (Wilt never upset Boston, but got "upset" by Boston in 3 of the 4 times they played with Wilt being on the superior regular season team.)

All this retrospective analysis is sophistry at its finest and quite frankly, mysticism by today's mystics....and though I can be careless with words, in this case I think it appropriate. I won't deny there are no excuses for him later in his career, however, for purposes of the all time list.

And, I won't deny (and have said so throughout this thread) that Wilt's role should have been more of a middle ground throughout his career, probably to average something like 28-32 ppg particularly in those earlier fast paced days. My only question is why should we blame Wilt for what is clearly a coaching problem? My god, they changed the rules for this guy, and referees were letting players get away with all sorts of abuse on him to even the playing field (by the refs OWN ADMISSION!). Why can't that be part of the discussion too?

I should also be clear: I really do agree with most of what you said, I just wish other analysts were as fair as you are.

It's not about blame, it's about refusing to allocate credit for things that weren't actually helping the team.

When someone saying "He scored 50 and it wasn't his fault that was a bad strategy", they are essentially advocating we treat the accomplishment as if it was as impactful as it looks despite the fact we know it wasn't. This is totally irrational.

As ElGee said, us Wilt "haters", are advocating Wilt being better than like 99.9% of the other players around. This is not what blame looks like.

I will admit that I get pithy and heated with people at times, but if you catch me when I'm being serious and professional-ish, I'll readily admit that Wilt at his best was amazing and that I think he would be better in other eras because of the superior coaching strategy. I simply refuse to give a player extra credit for what might have been.

And part of the reason for this thinking pertains to the middle ground you speak of. The thing is that with a player with truly great instincts, you don't have to tell them or teach them to get to the middle ground, they do so on their own. When Wilt saw his scoring dip so dramatically, this wasn't because Hannum was a fundamentalist, it was because Wilt worked by having a clear focus and got frustrated if you kept correcting him for little things. In theory a middle ground would have been the best policy, but if it was easy to tell Wilt how to do that, it would have been done.

Coaching is better today, but when it comes to truly grasping the nuances of a battlefield, plenty of the NBA still struggles and it becomes particularly noteworthy the larger a player's role is. Wilt could be superb today, but the instinctual edge that guys like Russell or Oscar had over Wilt wouldn't just go away.

[Sharifani_San]

Russell is the one that says continuously that Wilt was a smart player...i'm not so sure the "nuances of the game" argument quite applies to him.

I think among more serious analysts I am the only one who puts 1962 on the pedestal, ie i've put my homework into it.

and to the contrary, if they had won the series your argument against him for that year would have been null and void...I mean would you seriously stand there and say he didn't have the GOAT season in 1962 had they won the championship? because I think they would have beat LA. Maybe you'd be one of the few detractors, but who knows...

[Doctor MJ]

my criticisms are the veiled bias that statistics and particularly advanced statistics can provide, if its used correctly like Tsherkin uses it (and not like others use it) then I have no issues with it, but that's mostly because tsherkin naturally seems to have less skin in the game than others do. furthermore, It seems that everyone only acknowledges the subjectivity in other methods of analysis but not with statistics.

but one thing I have gotten out of this entire discussion (thankfully) is that some people just analyze GOAT players differently than I do, regardless of each players circumstance(s). At least I understand you and Elgee a little more (although I find laughable his assertion on who the onus is to provide evidence, any time one has an argument then you automatically have an onus upon you, but i digress....).

and, I think, I'm satisfied enough with this discussion (surrounding Wilt) to leave it for good. I'll probably save this link if future discussion arises.

Interesting to hear this perspective. On the whole: cool.

Let me give my spin on what ElGee describes. Not saying I speak for him, but just I have an opinion on that very topic which might come off as a middle ground:

In general, my default opinion for historical basketball events lies with the contemporary voices. In that sense it's up to contrasting arguments to prove those voices wrong. However, you don't need to prove every single utterance wrong for my general default to shift. If I see a particular narrative in play that seems off for a clear reason, I won't hesitate to say people back then were off.

This becomes particularly interesting when you really look at the voices of the day and you see the contradictions. People ask how we can possibly be so bold as to rate Wilt lower than most other people, but it's not like there weren't criticisms of Wilt during his own time. When those criticisms lineup with objective data, it because more bold to ignore that criticism than to ignore other opinions.

So for example, it makes a heck of a lot of sense to look at Wilt's huge points & rebounds and say "I can't imagine anyone doing that without having a huge impact. I dare you to convince me otherwise."...and we then point out that Wilt put up roughly those same numbers in '64-65 when he really wasn't helping his team at all. We therefore disprove the absolute causation and render that entire line of thinking shattered. Not that everyone acknowledges this of course, but it literally makes no sense to use that kind of argument once the '64-65 rebuttal has been made. And in that sense it quickly becomes the job of people to actually give some counter-proof in the opposite direction.

To be clear, an exchange like that does not prove Wilt never had impact, but rather merely that the "points & rebounds alone are good enough for me" line of thinking does not merit serious esteem. More depth is required, which the "hater" crowd typically understands, but the pro-Wilt crowd often times refuses to ever acknowledge. When they do acknowledge it though, that's when the good discussion starts because it's not like there aren't good pro-Wilt arguments to be made, it's just that a disproportionate amount of Wilt supporters are ill equipped to go there.