ponder276 wrote:One of Wilt's signature shots was to simply reach over shorter players and kinda flick the ball into the basket, layup-style. That would get blocked every single time today. He was shut down pretty effectively whenever he played Bill Russel.
"Shut down," eh?
Don't like facts much, do you? He averaged 28.7 ppg and 28.7 rpg (several boards per game above his career average and above his single-season best as well) against Russell in 143 games. He put 22 ppg, 32 rpg, and 10 apg on Russ in the '67 ECFs. He put 62 on Russell once and scored 50+ 6 other times against Russell and his Celtics. During the season in which he averaged 50+ ppg, he scored 50+ on Russell 4 times.
"Shut down" is not an accurate phrase, not even if you stretch it.
Wilt also had a 55-rebound game on Russell.
Incidentally, if you're looking for the breakdown:
Wilt averaged 30.0 PPG and 28.2 RPG in 94 regular season matchups against Russell (who posted 14.2 PPG and 22.9 RPG).
In 49 postseason matchups, Wilt managed 25.7 PPG and 28.0 RPG versus Russell's 14.9 PPG and 24.7 RPG.
So again, Wilt noticeably out-rebounded the second-best rebounder in NBA history, still scored a lot (remember, as a Sixer and a Laker, he shot a lot less than he did as a Warrior earlier in his career, accounting for a lot of the dip in scoring average).
But thanks for playing.
You're talking about a man about whom Russell once said:
"After I played him for the first time," Russell says, "I said, 'Let's see. He's four or five inches taller. He's 40 or 50 pounds heavier. His vertical leap is at least as good as mine. He can get up and down the floor as well as I can. And he's smart. The real problem with all this is that I have to show up!"
He said "The big fella was great, real great," he observed. "That was the best game he ever played against me" after Wilt put 30 points and 39 b boards on the Celtics in Game 2 of their series in '65.
You're also ignoring the fact that Wilt out-muscled a lot of very strong, very big guys and that he had a mid-range jumper out to around 15 feet.
You're ignoring that he could, and did, drop-step, spin and perform a variety of hook shots and other elementary post moves.
And you're ignoring that with a much less varied offense, Dwight Howard scores over 20 ppg (21.8 ppg at the moment) on extremely high efficiency.
Yes, Wilt finger-rolled a lot but he'd get FOULED a lot more often than he'd get blocked. If you ever watched him perform the finger roll, it was usually preceded by a shake of some kind, or used when he'd established such deep post position that he could have bounced it off his crotch and the defender still couldn't have done much about it, regardless of his size.
Had Wilt been born 40 years later, I'm sure he would still have been a great center, but if you think he would have put up a peak season of anywhere close to 50/25 in the modern game, you're deluding yourself. He'd probably put up Hakeem-like numbers though.
Hakeem-like numbers?
Look, I'll give you that Wilt was never going to average 50 ppg in the modern era; he had to shoot a DAMNED lot to do that even in his own era. And it's not likely that he would have a career average over 20 rpg in the modern era on account of the pace.
But you're talking about a guy who played 45.8 mpg over 14 seasons (1,045 games) in the regular season and 47.2 mpg in 160 postseason games. He had the endurance to stay out on the court and he was a dominant rebounder. Even if you assume that his rebound rates as an older guy on the Lakers would hold, he'd be grabbing about 20% of his team's rebounds while he was on the floor.
The four best rebounders in the league by that same measure this season are Dwight Howard, Marcus Camby, Tyson Chandler and Chris Kaman. They are posting rebound rates of 21.7, 21.0, 20.6 and 19.9, playing 38.5, 35.4, 34.8 and 38.0 minutes per game.
Let's take Kaman's rebound rate and look at his rebounds-per-minute value; he's getting about .345 rebounds per minute. Now, imagine if instead of 38.0 minutes per game, he were playing 45.8 minutes per game.
That projects to roughly 15.8 rpg, still enough to lead the league using a rebound rate from a post-knee injury Wilt in his mid-30s. I think it's safe to say that he'd be pretty well the most dominant rebounder in the league.
And we've already discussed how you've dramatically undervalued his offensive value and otherwise missed or incorrectly presented facts about Wilt.
Hakeem-like numbers? Olajuwon's prime was about 27/12. But he was also considerably smaller than Wilt, who'd more likely spend most of his career in the 54-58% range on his FG% and who drew fouls at about +0.14 FTA/FGA.
So basically, if you gave each of them 20 FGA, Hakeem was apt to get you about 7.2 FTA/g versus Wilt's 10. Wilt would likely score about 5.4 ppg off of free throws on average (career 54% FT) versus Olajuwon's 5.13. Same net result except that Wilt puts more pressure on the offense.
I could see the scoring being similar but this is presuming the lower FG% theory holds; in Wilt's ACTUAL career, he doesn't have a sample size large enough for seasons where he shot 18-20 FGA/g to really look at it.
What you DO see, however, is that when he shot under 20 FGA/g, he generally shot ridiculously well from the field. Let's look at 13-17 FGA/g.
In '67, when he won his first title, he shot 14.2 FGA/g and shot 68.3% from the field, drawing 10.8 FTA/g and scoring 24.1 ppg, about what Olajuwon scored during the lead-up to his 4-year run in the 90s. During that season, Wilt averaged 7.8 apg.
I think people would be pretty interested in a 24/8 guy, let alone a guy who'd be near to 16 rpg and who'd probably be the best defender in the league.
I'll be back at this later... you need to learn about Wilt Chamberlain before you spout off like that.
