Insane speed of Wilt Chamberlain

[twyzted]

Here's non sped up footage:

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

My clips aren't sped up either, did you even watch the video?

Yes, your clips are sped up. Look how unnatural everyone moves in them. Look at the clips I posted.

First clip in his first video is not sped up if it is, then maybe by .10% at most.

[70sFan]

I wish I could find it now, but there's an interview with Wilt on youtube where he's caught bsing about his track speed.

He throws out some number, and the interviewer asked you've been measured at that, and Wilt starts fumbling his words saying "oh look I know what I'm talking about."

It's the same with all these ridiculous legends you hear about famous people from like before the 70's.

Who cares about the numbers? We can watch footage and see that he was extremely fast, especially at his size.

[70sFan]

Watch on YouTube

Baby Kareem holding his own against Wilt.

Baby Kareem is arguably the best player ever, better than your beloved Shaq.

[70sFan]

Here's non sped up footage:

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

My clips aren't sped up either, did you even watch the video?

Yes, your clips are sped up. Look how unnatural everyone moves in them. Look at the clips I posted.

Show me unnatural movement in the first clip, I'm waiting.

[LakerLegend]

Watch on YouTube

Baby Kareem holding his own against Wilt.

Baby Kareem is arguably the best player ever, better than your beloved Shaq.

That's not the point, I'm not talking about skill.

Wilt supposedly had the strength of the Hulk and we have a young Kareem stuffing his dunk attempt at point blank range and more than physically holding his own strength wise in those clips.

[Pennebaker]

I wouldn't call that "insane" speed. Everyone else just looks slow.

And he has to look at the ball when he dribbles - negative marks for that.

[hauntedcomputer]

These guys had off-season jobs and played in arenas full of smoke (and many smoked themselves). Modern Wilt would've been raised as a point guard in the sixth and seventh grades and shooting threes, with year-round training and camps. He'd be putting up quadruple-doubles today.

[70sFan]

Watch on YouTube

Baby Kareem holding his own against Wilt.

Baby Kareem is arguably the best player ever, better than your beloved Shaq.

That's not the point, I'm not talking about skill.

Wilt supposedly had the strength of the Hulk and we have a young Kareem stuffing his dunk attempt at point blank range and more than physically holding his own strength wise in those clips.

I mean, I can show you plenty of examples of baby Tim Duncan blocking Shaq dunk attempts - what does it prove?

[70sFan]

I wouldn't call that "insane" speed. Everyone else just looks slow.

And he has to look at the ball when he dribbles - negative marks for that.

Wilt athletic feats are impressive regadless of competition faced, but your idea that players were slow back then is also wrong.

[alebaba]

Shaq is my favorite player of all time, but he wasn't on Wilt's level.

Far more skilled and a much higher BBIQ with Shaq.
Wilt was a great defender, but he relied solely on his physical dominance on offense, he didn't understand how to pass and wasn't very efficient. It's why he doesn't belong in the top 10 all time in my opinion.
Probably the 2nd best defensive C ever next to Russell, but Russeĺl was better because he knew he wasn't skilled enough to score so didn't try and just focused on passing and rebounding.

Shaq wasn’t efficient? Shaq’s career TS% is 59%. Wilt’s is 55%.

Wilt has better volume stats because there were so many extra possessions back then. In 1962 teams averaged 128 possessions per game. In 1999 teams averaged 89 possessions per game.

Shaq also has double the number of rings as Wilt.

Shaq would average 100 points in wilt era.

[druggas]

Shaq is my favorite player of all time, but he wasn't on Wilt's level.

No - he was levels above Wilt. Let’s be honest - Wilt was a great athlete for his time but would just be merely above average today. Shaq, Dwight, Kemp, LeBron, Barkley, David Robinson, Jordan….they were far more athletic than Wilt. Some of this clips are laughable - especially Wilt blocking that shot on the break from the guy travelling like a snail then launching the shot from 4 feet off the floor. :roll:

Another ignorant post.

[Mirotic12]

Man people do anything to discredit older players Jesus. Take Giannis add 3 inches, 40 pounds on him and keep the same ridiculous agility/speed, add some vert and give him more offensive skills + Bball IQ and you have Wilt Chamberlain.

Someone already alluded to Wilt stating his game was far more finnesse than he should have been. Which is true, if he genuinely took the Shaq approach then the dude most certainly would've averaged 45-50+ for his career.

Giannis is 6-11 without shoes and Wilt was 7-1 without shoes. So 2 inches.

If you watch the video closely you'll see that everyone is pretty much running at the same speed.

Old film footage needs to be speed corrected.

[druggas]

I wouldn't call that "insane" speed. Everyone else just looks slow.

And he has to look at the ball when he dribbles - negative marks for that.

Wilt athletic feats are impressive regadless of competition faced, but your idea that players were slow back then is also wrong.

70sFan, I don't know why you bother to post knowing that ignorant posters will try and tear your post apart. So much stupidity in these responses makes it hard to read.

[70sFan]

Still waiting for the proof of the first clip being sped up.

[D.Brasco]

I wouldn't call that "insane" speed. Everyone else just looks slow.

And he has to look at the ball when he dribbles - negative marks for that.

You'd laugh at how players today would have to dribble if they enforced palming as strictly as they did in the 60s. Hell they don't enforce it at all it seems these days.

[thebigbird]

Far more skilled and a much higher BBIQ with Shaq.
Wilt was a great defender, but he relied solely on his physical dominance on offense, he didn't understand how to pass and wasn't very efficient. It's why he doesn't belong in the top 10 all time in my opinion.
Probably the 2nd best defensive C ever next to Russell, but Russeĺl was better because he knew he wasn't skilled enough to score so didn't try and just focused on passing and rebounding.

Shaq wasn’t efficient? Shaq’s career TS% is 59%. Wilt’s is 55%.

Wilt has better volume stats because there were so many extra possessions back then. In 1962 teams averaged 128 possessions per game. In 1999 teams averaged 89 possessions per game.

Shaq also has double the number of rings as Wilt.

Shaq would average 100 points in wilt era.

For real. The 60s were a joke of an era. We joke about Jordan facing plumbers and mechanics but Wilt literally did.

[70sFan]

Shaq wasn’t efficient? Shaq’s career TS% is 59%. Wilt’s is 55%.

Wilt has better volume stats because there were so many extra possessions back then. In 1962 teams averaged 128 possessions per game. In 1999 teams averaged 89 possessions per game.

Shaq also has double the number of rings as Wilt.

Shaq would average 100 points in wilt era.

For real. The 60s were a joke of an era. We joke about Jordan facing plumbers and mechanics but Wilt literally did.

No, he didn't.

[KrAzY3]

Shaq would average 100 points in wilt era.

For real. The 60s were a joke of an era. We joke about Jordan facing plumbers and mechanics but Wilt literally did.

No, he didn't.

Sometimes it seems like people don't understand how hard it was to make the NBA. There were way less teams, and still a robust high school and college basketball scene. Sure they played a different style, they were coached differently and they trained differently. But the truth is guys like Wilt have athletic abilities that translate to any era. He'd just have different coaching and better training, but there's absolutely no proof that a guy like Wilt wouldn't be dominant in this era.

Wilt held his own against Kareem, Kareem held his own against Hakeem, Hakeem held his own against Shaq and Shaq won a championship after LeBron started playing in the NBA. So we can go all the way back to Wilt's time and demonstrate that there was no enormous jump in ability. I wish Shaq had dominated Hakeem for instance, but it didn't happen...

[Mirotic12]

Still waiting for the proof of the first clip being sped up.

It's probably not sped up by anyone at all. It doesn't have to be edited by someone to be faster. It's old enough film footage that it does not play at the original state and now plays faster than it should, because of the effects of aging. No one has to edit it to be faster, or to "speed it up". The age of the film caused it to happen on its own.

It's obviously not speed corrected back to its original state, in order to account for the film aging.

[Sedale Threatt]

For real. The 60s were a joke of an era. We joke about Jordan facing plumbers and mechanics but Wilt literally did.

No, he didn't.

Sometimes it seems like people don't understand how hard it was to make the NBA. There were way less teams, and still a robust high school and college basketball scene. Sure they played a different style, they were coached differently and they trained differently. But the truth is guys like Wilt have athletic abilities that translate to any era. He'd just have different coaching and better training, but there's absolutely no proof that a guy like Wilt wouldn't be dominant in this era.

Wilt held his own against Kareem, Kareem held his own against Hakeem, Hakeem held his own against Shaq and Shaq won a championship after LeBron started playing in the NBA. So we can go all the way back to Wilt's time and demonstrate that there was no enormous jump in ability. I wish Shaq had dominated Hakeem for instance, but it didn't happen...

Having done a ton of reading on Wilt, I do think there's a significant amount of exaggeration when it comes to his physical abilities, much of it coming from him. Like the tale about how he dunked the ball so hard through the rim it broke Red Kerr's toe; that one came from Kerr himself, but you could have 1,000 people corroborate that and I still wouldn't believe it.

For me, personally, the guy I think who gets constantly underrated for being the ultimate NBA freak of nature is Shaq. The human race has never produced a physical specimen like that, a 7-1, 350-pound dude with a proportional body and power, explosiveness, speed, quickness and agility to burn. Wilt might have been better from a track perspective, but on the court Shaq was in a class entirely of his own IMO. (Honorable mention to David Robinson.)

All of that said, I do think it's weird that so many NBA fans seem to bend over backwards to disrespect the game's history, something I rarely see with baseball and football. Obviously somebody like George Mikan would struggle in today's game, to the point that he might not even be able to play given the demands on defending in space and spacing the floor. And so what? He played when he played, he did what he did, and he served an integral role in helping establish the NBA as a permanent fixture in US pro sports.

And Wilt ... I see the same slight lack of fluidity and explosiveness that some other posters do (which is nitpicking), but if you can't also see the speed and sheer mobility of a guy that huge, you're being willfully ignorant. An athlete of his caliber coming along in the 50s must have been like seeing an alien land on the White House lawn. And 10 years later, only a couple of months removed from returning from a catastrophic knee injury at 33, he dropped 45/27 on Willis Reed in a Finals game -- most assuredly not a plumber or mechanic.

So bottom line, Wilt was decades ahead of his time, and he would absolutely translate to the modern game, especially if you consider advances in coaching/training/tactics. Hell, he was probably one of the first athletes to really get into weight lifting, at a point that was almost entirely a football thing. He'd also have coaches in his ear from Day 1 telling him to dunk every chance he got instead of settling for fadeaways and finger rolls, so his entire mentality would be different.