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During the 1959-1960 regular season, Wilt shattered the scoring record with a 37.6 ppg mark.

And he shattered Russell's rebounding record with 27.0 RPG.

His FG% was a career-low 46.1, which was the only time he failed to shoot at least 50% in his career, but it was still way ahead of the league average of .41.0.

He also led his team to a 49 and 26 record.

Meanwhile, Russell averaged 18.2 ppg, 24.0 rpg, and shot a career-best .46.7 from the field.

Russell's Celtics, as usual, had the best record in the league, at 59-16.

Who won the MVP? Chamberlain (as well as the ROY.)


Afterwards.

In the 61-62 season, Chamberlain put up what an ESPN panel labelled as the single greatest individual season in NBA history.

As he averaged 50.4 ppg, 25.7 rpg, and shot .50.6 from the field while leading his team to a 49 and 31 record.


Meanwhile, Russell averaged 18.9 ppg, 23.6 rpg, and shot .45.7 from the field (in a league that shot .42.6 while leading his team to a 60 and 20 record.

Now, Russell did have a 4.5 to a 2.4 APG edge over Wilt, but that was it.


Yet somehow Russell still won the MVP.

Furthermore what I really find interesting is 10 years later in Chamberlain's 71-72 season.

Wilt led a Laker team, that had finished with a 48-34 record the year before, to a 69-13 mark in 71-72 the best mark in NBA history at that point along with a 33-game winning streak that still to this day has never been seriously threatened.

He only scored 14.8 ppg, but he led the league in rebounding and shot blocking (as he nearly always did), and led the NBA in FG% by a large margin at .64.9.

He was also first-team all-defence and had the DPOY award existed back then, he would have won it easily.

Meanwhile, Kareem's Bucks, who had won the title in 70-71 with a 66-16 record, dropped slightly to a 63-19 mark.

He did go on to average 34 16 and 4 but those marks were way less than Wilt's 61-62 season.


yet Kareem goes on to win the MVP.

What exactly changed in the voter's criteria?


It is especially strange when you consider that Cowens got the award the next year over Kareem due to team record.

As Cowens averaged 20.5/16.2/4.1 on 45.2 FG% (-0.4 rFG%) and 48.1 TS% (-1.7 rTS%).

On the other hand, Kareem averaged 30.2/16.1/5.0 on 55.4 FG% (+9.8 rFG%) and 58.0 TS% (+8.2 rTS%).


Plus Abdul-Jabbar led the league in PER (28.5), WS (21.9), and WS/48 (.322) on a 60-plus-win team

The MVP award from 1960 to 1973 should have honestly gone like this.

1960 Russell

1961 Russell

1962 Wilt

1963 Russell

1964 Wilt

1965 Russell

1966 Wilt

1967 Wilt

1968 Wilt

1969 Reed

1970 Reed

1971 Kareem

1972 Wilt

1973 Kareem

Russell still ends up with 5 MVPs

Wilt now has 6 MVP's

Kareem still has 6 MVP's

Reed has 2 MVP's

West and Chamberlain split votes in 1972. There's the biggest, most obvious reason.

ronnymac2 wrote:West and Chamberlain split votes in 1972. There's the biggest, most obvious reason.

How come then Cowens won it the next season with havlicek finishing 5th in the voting compared to Kareem's closest teammate coming 19th

coastalmarker99 wrote:

ronnymac2 wrote:West and Chamberlain split votes in 1972. There's the biggest, most obvious reason.

How come then Cowens won it the next season with havlicek finishing 5th in the voting compared to Kareem's closest teammate coming 19th

I don't know. I would guess the players in the league saw Boston restored to former glory with a great center and attributed the successful 68-win 1973 REG SEA to that center. We're only four years removed from Russell winning a title with Boston.

ronnymac2 wrote:

coastalmarker99 wrote:

ronnymac2 wrote:West and Chamberlain split votes in 1972. There's the biggest, most obvious reason.

How come then Cowens won it the next season with havlicek finishing 5th in the voting compared to Kareem's closest teammate coming 19th

I don't know. I would guess the players in the league saw Boston restored to former glory with a great center and attributed the successful 68-win 1973 REG SEA to that center. We're only four years removed from Russell winning a title with Boston.

How can you explain them giving as nearly many first-place votes to tiny who won only 36 games compared to Kareem's 60? while playing zero defence.

It Makes zero sense.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/awards_1973.html

Furthermore, we clearly saw who was the real MVP of that Boston team when Havlicek got hurt and Cowens couldn't win a game without him.

coastalmarker99 wrote:

ronnymac2 wrote:

coastalmarker99 wrote:
How come then Cowens won it the next season with havlicek finishing 5th in the voting compared to Kareem's closest teammate coming 19th

I don't know. I would guess the players in the league saw Boston restored to former glory with a great center and attributed the successful 68-win 1973 REG SEA to that center. We're only four years removed from Russell winning a title with Boston.

How can you explain them giving as nearly many first-place votes to tiny who won only 36 games compared to Kareem's 60? while playing zero defence.

It Makes zero sense.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/awards_1973.html

If I played against a diminutive 6'1" dude who leads the league in PPG and APG, I'm probably wildly impressed by him. Off the cuff, remembering him torching me throughout the season at his size, I'd vote for him. Add voter fatigue and voila.

Whether it's the players or media members voting, none of these people are doing in-depth analysis of who should be MVP or making sure their criteria is strict and consistent from year-to-year. Ain't nobody got time for that.

The Celtics in 73 swept the Lakers in the regular season and split the games between them and the bucks with the bucks wins coming my single digits and the Celtics wins coming by double digits.

To me, this is very easy - Kareem anchored his team (with Oscar missing games) to basically the same level as Lakers in 1972. 1962 Warriors were clearly inferior team to the Celtics in the RS. So these two situations are not identical actually.

Wilt wasn't at superstar/mvp status in 1972.

ronnymac2 wrote:

coastalmarker99 wrote:

ronnymac2 wrote:West and Chamberlain split votes in 1972. There's the biggest, most obvious reason.

How come then Cowens won it the next season with havlicek finishing 5th in the voting compared to Kareem's closest teammate coming 19th

I don't know. I would guess the players in the league saw Boston restored to former glory with a great center and attributed the successful 68-win 1973 REG SEA to that center. We're only four years removed from Russell winning a title with Boston.

Yeah. Hondo got better and the celtics fell off massively and then cowens comes in and boston's prospects skyrocket. Compare that to the lakers where the lakers were already really good before wilt. In reality injuries and coaching played a factor in the regular seaosn dropoff later, but that's a much messier argument

70sFan wrote:To me, this is very easy - Kareem anchored his team (with Oscar missing games) to basically the same level as Lakers in 1972. 1962 Warriors were clearly inferior team to the Celtics in the RS. So these two situations are not identical actually.

Yeah, Kareem was just a better player I think.

OhayoKD wrote:

70sFan wrote:To me, this is very easy - Kareem anchored his team (with Oscar missing games) to basically the same level as Lakers in 1972. 1962 Warriors were clearly inferior team to the Celtics in the RS. So these two situations are not identical actually.

Yeah, Kareem was just a better player I think.

Absolutely, Kareem was far better than Wilt in 1972.

coastalmarker99 wrote:How come then Cowens won it the next season with havlicek finishing 5th in the voting compared to Kareem's closest teammate coming 19th

West was better than Havlicek, 1973 Kareem was worse than 1972 Kareem, the 1973 Bucks won less than in 1972, and the 1972 Bucks went 13-5 without Oscar while the 1973 Bucks went 6-0 without Kareem.

Furthermore, we clearly saw who was the real MVP of that Boston team when Havlicek got hurt and Cowens couldn't win a game without him.

Lol what? The Celtics lost in double overtime on the road against a 6-SRS team and then won two of the next three with Havlicek unable to play more than 30 minutes a game… If anything, that is the perfect encapsulation of how good they were even despite the injury to their second-best player. Cowens played essentially every minute. How do you think the team fares if Hank Finkel needs to absorb the bulk of those minutes????

I am not especially invested in your argument that Russell and Wilt should have swapped MVPs in 1960 and 1962, but histrionics over 1972 Wilt is a terrible way to push that case.