[Arnett] BREAKING: NEW Stats for Wilt Chamberlain Have Been Discovered & Officially Added to BasketballReference
I’ve been refreshing that page for the last 53 years waiting for this! Thank goodness!
53 years from now
“BREAKING: Archaeologists discover 18 unaccounted points bringing Bam’s total to 101 vs. the Wizards”
Adjusting to inflation fr
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None of em. That’s why I come here to collect a couple upvotes
😂😂😂 respect for the honesty, I do the same
What a weird ass response to a harmless joke lol
I thought the reply was funny, too.
I had a sensible chuckle at their comment. To each their own
Such unwarranted aggression lmao
Wild how we now know what your friends and family think of you
I’m his cousin and I think he’s funny in a kind of uncomfortable way.
Do any of your family members still talk to you? Honest question.
5.4 blocks per game at age fucking 36 lmao
He truly did average 10+ blocks in his prime didn’t he like those unofficial stats said, 5+ steals too
The most mythical creature ever in sports lmao
In the video they mentioned the HoF stats guy hand counted a random set of games across multiple seasons (they showed 50 box scores in the video but its probably more) for Wilt and the blocks average was 8.8 per game.
and Bill Russell wasn’t that far behind either
The 100 sign was for the game he had 100 blocks not points
People have gone through next-day newspaper writeups to try and piece together unofficial stats for wilt and bill Russell and there are a bunch of examples where they were described as getting “dozens” or “at least 20” blocks.
Dream lucky that these are unofficial 😂
His length is comparable to Wemby, 2.5’ shorter, 4” less wingspan but 50lbs heavier with track & field speed and leaping ability.
The OG most physically dominant player the league had ever seen.
He was clearly a better leaper than Wemby will ever be so he’s got the same reach if not more.
Reach matters a lot, and an argument could be made for Wemby being better laterally. I’m not saying he is, just an argument.
And if you factor in Wilt doing this half a century ago, he’s obviously more impressive in every aspect.
Paul Bunyan of the 20th century
Messi :)
I would say that’s Ohtani, but Wilt is top 3-5 for sure.
the Wilt blocks number is #2 for a single season for anyone curious, behind Mark Eaton. I was looking into this the other day
Fun fact about Eaton: he attributes Wilt Chamberlain for turning his career around with advice when they played in a pickup game together when he was at UCLA.
“See this basket?” he asked. “Your job is to stop players from getting there. Your job is to make them miss their shot, get the rebound, throw it up to the guard, let them go down the other end and score it. And your job is to cruise up to half court and see what’s going on. This is what you need to concentrate on,” the Big Dipper emphasized.
Celtic fans better thank the basketball gods that Wilt learned that shit late, particularly the letting others score part lol
Tbf, Wilt spent a lot of his early career with less than excellent scorers.
And Wilt himself was an extremely efficient volume scorer. Like in 1963, he averaged 45ppg while leading the league in FG%. In his 50ppg season, he was 2nd in FG%. He led the league in FG% 9 out of his 14 seasons. Even with his terrible free throw shooting, he was usually top 10 in TS% each year too.
Wilt was 3rd in assists per game during the regular season of 67, in the build up to his first ring. Under the coaching of Hanum and Sharman, Wilt was on two separate occasions, central to the passing systems of the teams he played for.
He knew how to pass, it’s down to the bad coaches who didn’t understand how to make use of him and just used him as a big man up front.
It’s said in the video but cool that you were already on top of it :)
whoops! guess i needed sound on
One of my all-time favorite Jazzmen. 2x DPOY, a staggering career 3.5 blocks per game, one of a handful of dudes that could actually stop prime Shaq, and an incredibly nice dude in person.
I want a statue of this guy, not the ones we have of less-popular-Kobe and Alex Jones.
Did they just recently add this?
It’s true they have blocks per game for his very final season on the site, a stupid 5.4 bpg. Is that new?
I know someone tracked like 80 games or so from Wilt and manually counted up his stats. Interesting if it’s apparently official now.
Yes it’s new, it was added very recently
basketball reference is usually very robust too, I’m genuinely surprised.
Watch the video
Didn’t the nba official tracker deliberately screw Timmy out of a quadruple double?
They did. Wouldve been crazy if Wemby gets one. The graphic would be “Last 3 players to record a quadruple double: David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Victor Wembanyama”
Alvin Robertson erasure
In the NBA Finals!
This has been disproven
Source
No Source required for the original claim, though?
There’s no reason the league should be able to go back and count up steals, blocks, and turnovers (etc.) from the games that they have and count those toward people’s career stats.
The fact that Wilt posted the second highest BPG average in his final season, which one would assume was his worst season.
This guy was the OG unicorn
yeah man. If you watch some of his insaneclips…it makes you think even Wemby wasn’t on his level athletically. Like I don’t think Wemby is getting his hand near the top of the backboard on blocks
Only guy I can think off the top of my head with that jumping ability was prime Dwight Howard. Dunked on a 12 foot rim during the Dunk Contest, and the top of a regular backboard is 12’ tall.
Yep and Wilt’s standing reach was much higher than Dwight’s and he was also more smooth.
I really wish people would go back and watch more clips of old legends. A lot of people just assume wilt was tall and other guys weren’t and that was it. Dude, was all world athletic before you factor in basketball , which by the way he was quite skilled at too. Not just some tall dude.
My personal favorite, but not nearly as old, Charles Barkley career highlights. Dude on the break was like prime Russell Westbrook with the body of a moose
Bro anyone who hasn’t go look at the famous photo of him, Schwarzenegger, and Andre The Giant all standing together. Wilt makes Arnold look like a child and looks like he’d give Andre a rough time if it came down to it.
Dude was an insane physical talent, arguably the best to ever step foot on the court. Basically Wemby proportions with Shaq level strength.
I have to disagree with adding non-NBA verified statistics to basketball reference on principle. What’s the problem with waiting until they are verified?
Because if basketball ref didnt do this the NBA might just ignore it. It puts pressure on them to at least say yes or no.
This doesn’t make sense as a reason, why would the NBA ignore this? It’s good for the league and there’s no conspiracy here to blame
The NBA front office isn’t exactly well ran.
They love this old school stuff, their PR office is always on it. And if it’s not well ran, why do we think this will get them to change anything?
I still don’t think “because if they didn’t the NBA might never find the answer” is a good reason.
Where do we draw the line? People are okay with this because its Wilt, but what if we find some newspaper article that cites Oscar Roberston averaged 3 steals a game in 1965, are we putting that down as fact too? Of course not. Which is why it doesn’t make sense, because they aren’t going to put in unverified information for any other player.
It’s not just Wilt they’ve put in stats unrecognized by the NBA for other players too based on verifying old newspaper articles and other sources.
This is just getting a headline on reddit because it’s comical how many blocks Wilt recorded l.
I’m not so sure it’s good for the league. It’s good for people who care about basketball, but for the league specifically, can’t say for sure. Wilt isn’t part of the league anymore, so it isn’t like they can profit off it. All this will do for the league is make some record more difficult to break, which means less marketing opportunities for new players. I wouldn’t go as far as say it’s bad for the league because I think it’s quite insignificant. But I do think it’s more bad than good (for the league) if we really nitpick it.
Does this make money? If no then they don’t care
Because they’re never going to do that. It’s not what the NBA does or has ever done (hell, they don’t even acknowledge the ABA as a part of NBA history). Sports-Reference is first and foremost a research and history site, and has built up enough credibility to do things likes this (as they laid out in the video and their blog). It doesn’t matter that there’s been credible information unearthed, it doesn’t come from NBA sources, so they’re not going to incorporate it into official league stats.
Because they’re never going to do that. It’s not what the NBA does or has ever done
Didn’t they do this with independent auditors when JJJ’s block total counts were challenged after his DPOY?
Yeah, that’s correcting their official score keeping. That’s not what this is though. The NBA did not consider blocks an official stat before the ‘74 season, so as far as they’re concerned there’s nothing for them to look at and/or correct.
they posted about it on /r/nba
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1s2wfxf/several_newly_discovered_unofficial_stats_added/
Holy shit
Well I guess Wemby won’t get the stat then
If there’s one thing I’ve thought about Wilt, it’s that he didn’t have enough stats /s
wdym stats were discovered
were they doing spring cleaning and found some relics in the back of the file cabinet
Probably. They also probably watched footage back
Cool
But is the guy jut repeating the same stuff for the first three minutes?
5.4 blocks/game when WC was already kinda done, just imagine what it would have been in the early 60s
I’m just noticing how everyone on that top 10 played at least 80 games. That’s the easiest way to tell it happened decades ago.
My favorite part about this video is about 2⁄3 of the way in, some dude gets rejected and immediately turns around to jaw at the ref
Some things never change I guess
JJ Reddick would say those Wilt blocks were against plumbers and firemen 🙄
With a name like Tree Rollins, you better be up in the high scores for blocks.
Wish Mutumbo was up there
I’m just glad that Mr. Arnett did not get “onboard” with Klutch Sports.
Gotta appreciate YT creators who refused temptations from self-described “NBA Affiliates” promising views, subscribers, exclusives and incentives in exchange for propagating lies.
5.4 blocks per game LOL. Insanity numbers
bruh Wilt Defense > Wemby I’m telling yall. Especially after watching Wemby defend Jokic
This is a seminal moment in NBA history and you’re out here using it as an excuse to dump on a 22-year-old. Let that sink in
I’m not dumping on anyone lmao Wemby is great.
Fake like his 100 point game
There is a radio broadcast and there are eyewitnesses who attended the game. Plus there are newspaper boxscores of the game printed back then. How is this even a conspiracy theory?
As for his blocks, why would that be hard to believe in the early 70s? Wilt put up monster stats across his entire career, and more shots were taken at the rim where bigs camped out without a three point line.
Theres more video evidence of Pope Leo XIII was born in 1810 than Wilts 100 points game. Fake ass propaganda shit
It was the 1960s You think America in the 1960s were lying to make up stuff that was positive about a black man? Come on now lmao
Theres no video evidence as the nba wasnt near as popular as it was and most games were not televised
There isnt some conspiracy He got 100 points
The Warriors weren’t even playing in their primary arena and it was a meaningless game otherwise at the end of the season. Games just weren’t televised to the extent they are now. Even on the chance it was, there’s a good chance whoever broadcasted it would tape over it anyway. This is what happened to many episodes of Doctor Who in the 60’s.
Why does there have to be video evidence? Are you saying anything without video evident real? Because that would mean reality started some time in the past 150 years or so.
Are you claiming the game wasn’t played, the NBA, the players, coaches and fans along with the radio broadcasters and newspapers were all in on the conspiracy? And only in the last few years did people figure out a game that wasn’t televised didn’t exist?