Wilt Chamberlain Prime Offensive Impact

[Dipper 13]

From Dean Oliver's book, Basketball On Paper.







Assuming these estimates reflect Wilt's individual play:

-He looks shaky in the early years offensively outside of the 1961-63 period (notably '62), though he improves a great deal after going to a stronger team (Sixers) primarily focused on winning. In 1966 they are +3.4, followed by +6.8 in 1967, and +3.5 in 1968. Obviously they never reached their full offensive potential primarily due to Wilt's poor FT shooting, but his ball monopoly at this point was not a problem anymore as it was pre-Hannum in San Francisco.

The Evening News - Mar 21, 1966





-His defensive effort was clearly inconsistent, peaking in 1964 right after what was easily his worst defensive year in 1963. No surprises either way.

-The 1967 team nearly doubled their offensive efficiency with Wilt taking less shots, passing off more, and cutting the turnaround bank shot out of his game. He relied on the dunk more than ever now, even breaking the rim down on Feb. 12 in Boston Garden.

-The Celtics look historically dominant defensively and exceptionally poor offensively, outside of Russell's first 4 years.

-The 1964 team under Hannum was clearly a defensive oriented team, with an exceptionally poor offensive supporting cast. There were some offensive chemistry issues as Thurmond adjusted to playing forward instead of center. Plus they had a low post center and no outside shooting at all, which was magnified with Arizin's retirement before the 1963 season. It's amazing the '63 offense was even above league average at all.

-The 1965 figure is misleading since it includes both the Warriors & Sixers figure, not showing how either team did in his absence or with him (separately). Either way there was a huge improvement in 1966 with Wilt & Billy C starting with the team from training camp, and an even bigger improvement in 1967.



This regression method makes more sense to me than assuming all teams rebounded their offensive backboard and turned the ball over at the exact same rate every single year.






Let us look at the average offensive and defensive ratings relative to league average for the specified teams over a 3 year and 4 year period.


1966-68 76ers: +4.6 ORtg, -1.7 DRtg
1964-1968 Warriors/76ers: +3.0 ORtg, -2.8 DRtg (Left out 1964-65 due to games missed)


1963-1965 Celtics: -2.0 ORtg, -8.2 DRtg
1962-1965 Celtics: -1.6 ORtg, -8.1 DRtg




Let us compare to some other teams featuring excellent centers in more recent history.


1976-1978 Lakers: +1.6 ORtg, -0.1 DRtg
1974-1978 Bucks/Lakers: +2.1 ORtg, -1.1 DRtg (Left out 1974-75 due to KAJ games missed)



2000-2002 Lakers: +4.5 ORtg, -2.3 DRtg
1999-2002 Lakers: +4.7 ORtg, -1.2 DRtg

If I made it a 5 year average including the '98 season, the offense looks even better.

1998-2002 Lakers: +5.2 ORtg, -1.2 DRtg



1993-1995 Rockets: +1.0 ORtg, -2.9 DRtg
1993-1996 Rockets: +1.1 ORtg, -2.2 DRtg

[ceiling raiser]

Nice research.

I don't have my copy available, but I don't think he listed the complete dataset for all teams (for the years typically unavailable). I know DO used to post on the old APBRMetrics board, maybe he's still floating around there. Does anybody have an account there that could ask around?

[Gregoire]

IMO Wilts offensive impact in peak playoffs is below impacts of Hakeem,Shaq and Kareem. But he was very impactful on D.

[Dipper 13]

I don't have my copy available, but I don't think he listed the complete dataset for all teams (for the years typically unavailable).

No I don't believe he did. I wonder how the Royals and Lakers would look.

[Dipper 13]

IMO Wilts offensive impact in peak playoffs is below impacts of Hakeem,Shaq and Kareem. But he was very impactful on D.

That may be, however he was clearly able to lead more than an average or negative offensive team in his scoring days. Even Jordan's Bulls in the early years from 1987-1989 were only +1.0 ORtg team on average. Compare this to the Warriors from 1961-63 who were on average a +1.3 ORtg team. Though to be fair Arizin was playing in 1961 through 1962, and he was a better offensive player than anyone Jordan has ever played with.

[ceiling raiser]

Not sure if bumping threads is permitted, but I had a chance to put a spreadsheet together to flesh out Oliver's numbers for 55-73. Here is the link:

http://www27.zippyshare.com/v/96967454/file.html

I used the method outlined in Appendix 4 of Basketball on Paper; comparison tables are also included. My numbers are generally very close to Oliver's (likely due to rounding errors, as in BOP Oliver only uses values rounded to the nearest tenth). The one exception is the comparison to league average for the ORtg/DRtg for the 1965-66 season. This is potentially due to a typo on Oliver's part, as in the table he lists '93.1' as the league average ORtg/DRtg for BOTH 1964-65 and 1965-66.

I'll upload this to Google Docs when I have a chance to go through each cell to extensively check for errors.

EDIT: Here is the Google Docs Spreadsheet link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv? ... full#gid=0

This only has the numeric values though (the Excel document you can download from Zippyshare using the other link above), since I'm getting a parse error for the main spreadsheet with formulas/calculations.