Here is evidence of the fact Wilt was robbed of the 1962 MVP when he averaged 50PPG due to other players disliking him.

[druggas]

I'm a fan of Wilt, he was an incredibly athlete. However, if he truly was unstoppable he would have won more than two championships in his career. So, I think there's a little more to the story of Russell vs. Wilt than just bias. Wilt was fixated on statistics and Russell was fixated on winning. This lead to some of the bias...

Not even close. That's the bias exuded toward Wilt.

[AbeVigodaLive]

1) Of course there was bias vs. Wilt... if he didn't win MVP despite going for 50/26 on a good team. But thanks for the historical anecdotes, always good.

2) The officials couldn't have been that blatantly biased against him... or were just inept at it. The guy averaged 48.5 minutes per game. It's one thing to call a goaltend on a ball he never touched... but it would have been much more effective to call an occasional foul on a guy even if he never touched the opponent. Apparently, Wilt was never in foul trouble a single time all season?*



* Would be interested in anecdotes about that if OP has them.

[KrAzY3]

I'm a fan of Wilt, he was an incredibly athlete. However, if he truly was unstoppable he would have won more than two championships in his career. So, I think there's a little more to the story of Russell vs. Wilt than just bias. Wilt was fixated on statistics and Russell was fixated on winning. This lead to some of the bias...

Overlooking the fact that basketball is a team game.

I used the word unstoppable for a reason. Clearly he could be stopped, or at least negated, even when he was scoring 50 per game. Which goes back to the idea of an MVP award, it isn't best statics for a season. It's most valuable, and that is relative to team success because as you pointed out it's a team game right?

Also, let's not forget that he teamed up with Elgin Baylor and Jerry West. So it wasn't like he spent his entire career playing by himself or something.

[Kingsway_fan]

Is looking up obscure Wilt stuff your fulltime job? I never see you do anything else lol.

WILT IS GOAT。。。not even close

[Dutchball97]

Is looking up obscure Wilt stuff your fulltime job? I never see you do anything else lol.

WILT IS GOAT。。。not even close

Why you felt the need to reply to me with that? Idc who you think is the GOAT.

[JonFromVA]

Presumably the idea that the MVP should go to the best player on the best team came from somewhere ... and Russell was known for winning (Celtics got 60-wins that season), and Wilt was known for putting up monster stats (Warriors won 49 that year).

Westbrook winning MVP on a 47-win team is one of the exceptions to how the voting had always went. The narrative around averaging a triple double just took hold and they kind of forgot the cool thing about a triple double wasn't the slash line, but how much that sort of performance contributed to winning. Which isn't to say Westbrook didn't contribute to winning, he did very much, but he'd be sitting on the bench getting his usual breaks while his teammates would be blowing the game.

Players have to adjust how they play so the team benefits the most from their production, and that's been a problem for both Westbrook, Wilt, and even Jordan in his early days.

[turnaroundJ]

Why couldn’t he win in 1969? Or every year he was with Jerry West?

[GSWFan1994]

Here's one of Wilt's greatest anecdotes, via Open Court Basketball (originally in the book "Tall Tales", which is amazing BTW):

“The greatest play I’ve ever seen was one of the last games of the 1966-67 season and were playing Baltimore. We [Philadelphia] were going for the best record in NBA history.

There was a play earlier in the game where Gus Johnson had dunked one over Wilt. Gus was a very strong player. I weighed 220 pounds, and with one hand Gus could push me out of the lane. The man was a physical specimen [6-foot-6, 230 pounds], all muscle. He loved to dunk and was a very colorful player. When he slammed it on Wilt, he really threw it down, and you could tell that Wilt didn’t like it one bit.

Later in the game, Gus was out on the fast break, and the only man between him and the basket was Wilt. He was going to dunk on Wilt–again. Gus cupped the ball and took off–he had a perfect angle for a slam. Wilt went up and with one hand he grabbed the ball–cleanly! Then he took the ball and shoved it right back into Gus, drilling Gus into the floor with the basketball.

Gus was flattened and they carried him out. It turned out that Gus Johnson was the only player in NBA history to suffer a dislocated shoulder from a blocked shot.”

[Source: Billy Cunningham, Tall Tales (by Terry Pluto) p. 236]

So, is this really an urban legend?

Let's see video evidence of another play involving Wilt & Gus:

Watch on YouTube

[GSWFan1994]

Why couldn’t he win in 1969? Or every year he was with Jerry West?

It's a team sport. Not every year the team with the best individual player wins.

Happens in other sports as well, for example in the soccer World Cups.

[ConSarnit]

The other guys just probably talked to his teammates. FGA per game league leaders 1961-62:

#1 Wilt: 39.5




#2 Bob Pettit: 24.5
#3 Riche Guerin: 24.3

It must have been SUPER FUN to play with Wilt. Perfectly reasonable to take 60% more shots than the next highest guy in the league. Everyone LOVES playing with those guys.

[HardenandWilt]

Anybody else see parallels with harden and wilt with how the nba treated them when it was time to hand out the hardware

[xdrta+]

Anybody else see parallels with harden and wilt with how the nba treated them when it was time to hand out the hardware

Not me.

[LloydFree]

Forget 1962. How about 1969, when he lost the MVP to a guy averaging 14 and 18. Wilt averaged 21 and 21 in 1969

[DonaldSanders]

I'm a fan of Wilt, he was an incredibly athlete. However, if he truly was unstoppable he would have won more than two championships in his career. So, I think there's a little more to the story of Russell vs. Wilt than just bias. Wilt was fixated on statistics and Russell was fixated on winning. This lead to some of the bias...

I think you are over simplifying Wilt. He absolutely did not just want to create a bunch of stats. As he aged he tried to score less and go for assists.

What most people forget in the Russell vs. Wilt debate is the following 3 things:
1) The Celtics won 8 out of 10 championships in the 60s in a league with only 9 teams (most of the decade). The Celtics had a much more stacked team and there wasn't a lot other teams could do about it.

2) Wilt's playoffs stats directly vs. Russell were better. Go look up the playoff series, Russell never outplayed Wilt, not one time.

A better comparison to me is LeBron vs. Curry, where the Warriors had a better team than LeBron's Cavs but LeBron managed to snatch an all time great finals win vs. a goliath team, just as Wilt did vs. the Celtics in 67-68. Nobody pretends Steph is better than LeBron, and you can check the stats and see that LeBron is better than Steph Curry in their playoff matchups. Same for Wilt vs. Russell.

3) Wilt's prime co-incided mostly with the Celtic's big run. He really declined as he got older and it the Celtics dynasty was done and the league expanded. When Kareem won in 1970-71, there was no more big dynasty and the league had expanded to 17 teams. This was Kareem's only title without Magic, but everyone seems to think Kareem is somehow automatically above Wilt.

Anybody else see parallels with harden and wilt with how the nba treated them when it was time to hand out the hardware

No, not at all.

[70sFan]

I'm sick of Wilt fans trying to trash Russell every single time. No, Russell deserved his MVP - it was arguably his best season. It reminds me everyone saying that Jordan was better than Magic in 1987 - no, he wasn't.

Wilt became better player later in his career (around 1963/64 season) on both ends of the floor by the way.

[MaxZaslofskyJr]

It depends on what you value. Spectacle, individual achievement, you gotta go with Wilt every time. Winning titles? That’s all Russell was about. ....

Well, for what it is worth, Wilt actually won more titles than Bill Russell
Wilt Chamberlain
7× NBA scoring champion (1960–1966)
11× NBA rebounding champion (1960–1963, 1966–1969, 1971–1973)
NBA assist leader (1968)

Bill Russell
4× NBA rebounding champion (1958, 1959, 1964, 1965)

Now, Bill Russell's teams happened to win more titles than Wilt's but, after all as we all know, basketball is a team sport. Russell's teammates had plenty to do with that for certain.

[70sFan]

1) The Celtics won 8 out of 10 championships in this era in a league with only 9 teams. The Celtics had a much more stacked team and there wasn't a lot other teams could do about it.

Look at 1964 Celtics roster - with literally one above average scorer on the roster. 1965 wasn't much better.

Compare 1965-69 Wilt rosters and Russell rosters, there is no clear gap either way.

2) Wilt's playoffs stats directly vs. Russell were better. Go look up the playoff series, Russell never outplayed Wilt, not one time.

You mean boxscore stats, right? That's not the end of debate though, we aren't in 2005 anymore.

I'd say that Russell outplayed Wilt in 1966 and 1969. 1960, 1962 and 1968 are close as well. Wilt has the edge in 1964, 1965 and 1967.

[SelfishPlayer]

Wilt could have been better if he didn't not only
set the bar for individual greatness but establish what that truly means... He never had anyone's individual career to chase.

[Chanel Bomber]

Wilt was obviously an all-time great and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if some of his peers resented him. But I wouldn't dismiss the notion that that Russell was a greater player despite the gap in the numbers.

Wilt famously didn't value winning as much as Bill Russell and most great players did, even publicly questioning America's obsession with winning at all costs before a game 7 (an interesting conversation outside of that context), which had a deflating impact on his teammates.

He didn't always do what was necessary defensively either, especially against stretch bigs like Willis Reed, presumably because he was more focused on grabbing rebounds.

And it's not a coincidence Wilt had some of the worst game 7 performances by an an all-time great in NBA history.

Wilt was a free spirit, a prodigy and a giant, who simply didn't have the obsession for winning that most great players are fueled by.

[Johnny Bball]

Is looking up obscure Wilt stuff your fulltime job? I never see you do anything else lol.

Yeah, dude, why not start a Russell Westbrook thread to shake things up?

Seriously, it's good to see some real basketball in here once in a while instead of girly gossip. Back then players hated you and wanted to beat you, not join your team and your agency and your off-court brand. If there were a redraft of all players in history, Wilt would be the #1 pick and it's not even a debate.

Play off record till 1968:
Russell vs Baylor/West 5-0
Russell vs Wilt 6-1

1968: Wilt joins Baylor and West in LA

1969: Russell beats Baylor/West + Wilt once again in the NBA Finals

Yeah...players never joined in the sixties.

There was no unrestricted free agency lmao. There was nothing until 1988.