Yeah my bad. I still gotta work on that haha.

Because advanced stat nerds don’t understand the game

that’s what i was thinking lol

Because it’s his best overall season. His scoring 50 and 25 season was insane, but he had a 20-1 true shot to assist ratio and it was one dimensional offensively. Also the team was playing at a faster pace that year, and lower numbers shouldn’t be penalized because it just matters how often you score when you possess the ball, not how many points your team has.

His 1967 season improved his team’s offense much more than 62 did, and was a better defensive season. If you adjust for pace, Wilt’s 1962 season was 35.2 points, 5.7rts, 11.3 rebounds, and 1.9 assists per 75 possessions while playing 48.5 minutes. His 1967 season was 18.7 points, 14.4rts, 12.4 rebounds, and 7.3 assists per 75 possessions while playing 45.5 minutes. Looking at team offensive ratings and with or without you data, he benefited his teams’s offense much more in 1967 than 1962.

The unpredictability of being able to score and playmake means it’s harder for defense’s to adapt. Too much volume scoring compared to your team with a lack of playmaking can eventually have a redundant and harmful effect. If you can only score and never pass, then defenses can adapt more effective game plans. They can decide to focus on stopping the other four players knowing one person can’t beat five and that the scorer can’t create for his teammates. This is what the 2009 Magic did against the Cavs, just let LeBron score as much as possible and focused on stopping the other 4 players (although LeBron is an all time playmaker so he still racked up crazy assists that series). The raw scoring numbers then often don’t reflect the actual impact you have on team offense.

Meanwhile if you can only playmake and can’t score, defenses can adapt and focus more on your teammates so you create less open shots for your teammates, and you can’t punish them with scoring. This means the raw playmaking numbers don’t actually represent the impact you are having on offense. When you have someone who can score and playmake vs someone who can just score, it makes it much harder to adapt for defenses and is disproportionately much more impactful than someone who has much better scoring numbers and much worse playmaking numbers and vice versa. Wilt could score and create at an elite level that year and could adapt to individual defensive plans by turning up the scoring or playmaking in individual games, rather than only being able to score without being able to adapt for whether teams were accounting for that in their defensive plans.

Also he had 24.2 points per game I’m just adjusting per 75 possessions.

Relative true shooting. The difference between that players true shooting percentage that season and the league average true shooting percentage.

If that was the case Jordans 37.1 would be higher than his other ones. Filling it up and losing doesn’t impress me as much

The free throw merchant should not be on this list. It wasn’t on the same level of skill dominance as these guys, he cheesed the game and systematically got away with flagrant travels. That’s not in contention for “greatest individual season in NBA history”.

I heavily debated putting 77 Kareem fourth but slightly leaned Wilt. Those seasons are basically tied in my mind.

Why Steph and Bird when LeBron and MJ played in the same era and were better…