Heej wrote:In his defense the limited offensively line is somewhat accurate in that Wilt could never balance scoring and playmaking, it was always either or for him. The best players blend the 2 into something greater than the sum of its parts, while weaker players oscillate back and forth between the two modes.
Wilt may have struggled with being a fluid playmaker, but this is not unique to him and remember not only was he and his peers the pioneers of the game but they also had much stricter dribbling and carrying rules as well as stricter assist tallies so playmaking was in general just a lot harder back then.
However, back to the original statement...it is still absurd to say Wilt is limited offensively. If you say that about a player like Wilt you could say it for any player in history. No player was the absolute perfect scorer, but Wilt is one of the greatest scorers in history and still has dozens of records on the books. For him to play as well as he did without ever having a good coach at any level until midway through his pro career just further emphasizes how great of an athlete he was. Unlike players today, Wilt didn't have the benefit of studying players before him, since he was the first of his kind as an uber athletic center, and the rules didn't allow for him to be physical like Shaq did. You can't compare his offensive skillset to those who came after him and had the benefit of all that collective knowledge plus excellent college and/or pro coaches.
Wilt absolutely dominated his era in terms of center matchups aside from his famous rivalry with Russ, and even then Wilt usually played very well and arguably as well or better than Russ. There was actually quite a bit of center talent in his era, too. There was more star centers in the 60's relative to the size of the league than any era but the 90's. And they were all a bit different in their skillsets as centers...these guys were the pioneers for the centers of the 70's, 80's and even 90's. When you compare players across eras, you need to look at how they did against their peers and compare their relative successes instead because the raw stats to not compare across eras. Wilts scoring and rebounding records seem like cheat codes when compared to modern eras, because it was a different game back then with different rules. So to compare Wilt to other centers, you have to look at how much he dominated his peers, and compare that with how much other centers of other eras dominated their peers. And Wilt is still among the best ever when you look at it this way. So even if he seems to have holes in his game compared to players of today that just speaks to the evolution of the sport. It is absurd to say Wilt Chamberlain is limited offensively. He is one of the most dominant forces the league has ever seen.
