But when wilt played against bill russell, the only other player like him – a modern athletic big, his numbers look a lot like a star big of today. Not regularly putting up 50.

The 2020s feature significantly more 32ppg scorers than the 1960s do without Wilt with 8 seasons already

there’s like 6 times more NBA players in the league nowadays though…but in terms of Wilt being an anomaly even in his era, yeah can’t argue with that

Why are you using 32? Just to eliminate all the times West and Oscar were 30+, and Kareem i cant be bothered looking for others.

Baylor had 38ppg in 62. Limited to 48 games cause on his off days he was in boot camp lol. I don’t think any player today could do what Wilt and Baylor were doing. Recency bias and espn and Nike commercials have killed a lot of brain cells when it comes to sports numbers. Basketball has been the most damaged by not appreciating the history (by the fans)

Wilt Chamberlain Archive did a good video on Willis Reed and the level of competition. Reed only played for 10 years and 54 percent of his games were against a Hall of Fame center. He played Wilt alone 72 times.

Yeah, Kareem also benefited from the ABA taking away a lot of the talent. He was an awesome player though right from from the jump.

But he competed well against players like Moses Malone and Hakeem. Hakeem in turn played well, Hakeem played well against Shaq, Ewing and Robinson. Wilt played well against Kareem, so there’s like six degrees of separation type stuff with those guys

In terms of career stats, a fun one to consider is “what if Kareem came to the league when he was 19 and not 22.”

A lot of the “Kareem is top three” push is a recent development from LeBron fans because if LeBron is number one because of his longevity and total counting stats, then whoever he passed for number one surely must be up there too.

Kareem played in the NBA, when a bunch of good players were in the ABA

I disagree entirely, Russ playstyle was mostly fine. His problem was that he just couldn’t shoot especially in the second half of his career if you look at his free throw percentage. But even in his peak he was never a good shooter. Oscar led the league in free throw percentage twice. He was an elite shooter. Russell accusation that he stat padded or any of these other weird accusations make little sense to me. People make it seem like if Jeff Teague hung around the paint he could average 12 rebounds a game too. Russ  also averaged a triple-double with the Wizards and displayed elite rebounding his entire career (So the idea the Thunder used some kind of gimmick with Steven Adams boxing out so he could get rebounds doesn’t make sense in that context). Plus him getting the rebound to allow him to immediately start the fast break which was an effective strategy. So this idea that he got his rebounds through some kind of gimmickry is silly. 

triple double is also the most arbitrary stat there is. A stat that says a 13/11/10 game is the same as a 42/12/13 game is dumb. Or how a 45/9/7 game would “hurt” this stat

It’s also funny how we’ve moved past shooting splits and use TS% but for some reason people love to still talk about triple doubles like they mean something

And you would say he was a scrub who only put up those numbers because he played against plumbers, I’m guessing

Could he handle the physicality…

Damn, Wilt was nuts

It was not enforced well at all. Half of wilts blocks are goalt3nds today