Wilt has the top 6 seasons in terms of minutes played, so this is just another Wilt doing Wilt things stat

Quick search shows the Warriors had 7 games that went to OT that year, including 1 game that went to 3OT and another 2OT

Wilt sat a total of 8 minutes the whole season

The Sixers honor Wilt by not having a back up center to this very day.

Psychotic cardio tbh

High MPG averages were not uncommon.

See e.g. Oscar Robertson 46.0 in 1966, Tiny 46.0 in 1973, Neil Johnston 45.8 in 1954, Havlicek 45.4 in 1971, Rick Barry 45.2 in 1972, Bill Russell 45.2 in 1962, Elgin Baylor 44.4 in 1962.

So part of it was that Wilt was a great athlete with great endurance.

But the bigger part was probably simply how the game was played back then (nothing near as much running as today). Centers especially just ran from low post (offense) to the other low post (defense). Today Wilt would have to at least occasionally run around in circles chasing Steph.

The owner was selling the team. So he featured Wilt scoring 50 pts per game, that was the aim, wilt playing all minutes was just a way to attain the 50 pt average

It was a different time, the dude was a unicorn in that era. The NBA had to implement various rules in regard to the paint because of this dude. They used to inbound the ball and throw it over the backboard to Wilt so he could dunk it, banned that. Offensive goaltending, the dude used to redirect misses from his teammates and himself so they made a rule. They even widened the paint a whole 4 feet to keep him further from the basket to make it more fair. It was a perfect storm of freak genetic athleticism in an era that you could say was a little lacking in that department.

Also to add, I’m no Wilt super fan. I just respect unmatched greatness and I do defend him a bit.

That one clip of SAS saying he won’t accept Wilt>Shaq because “Wilt was half a foot taller than everyone in his day”… That’s just not true. The average center was only AN INCH shorter in the 1960s than they are now. Russell was undersized. Wilt was just very tall (even for today he’d be a tall center) and was a FREAK OF NATURE.

Not that you can’t say Shaq>Wilt that’s one of the biggest debates of all time. But I just hated how SAS perpetuated such a dumb myth that’s so easily debunked and seen as COMPLETELY FALSE. When he’s supposed to be an all knowledgable analyst. Yes, you can make hyperbolic statements and say outlandish things but saying something so blatantly false is just gonna make more fans misinformed.

Now for Bill being Wilt’s kryptonite, I’d like to learn more about the. Because that’s the biggest “valid”argument I hear against Wilt being in the top 5 all time (the invalid FAKE ones being he was so much taller or his stats aren’t real).

that’s nothing. I average 55 MPG in my historic 2009 prius.

1. Wilt played 3,882 total minutes out of a possible 3,890 minutes across 80 games

He missed only 8 minutes all season, and played multiple overtimes . The only reason he missed 8 minutes is because he was ejected from the game on January 3, 1962

https://www.espn.com/magazine/hirdt_20020306.html

The schedule was far more compressed and there were no charter

Wilt’s Warriors played on back-to-back dates 13 times, plus back-to-back-to-back dates eight times, plus back-to-back-to-back-to-back dates twice – and, oh yes, once in mid-January they played five games on five consecutive dates, bouncing from Detroit to Philly to Boston back to Philly and then to Utica, N.Y., where they beat the Syracuse Nationals – in overtime! (They won four of five, with Wilt amassing 275 points and 126 boards.)

1. Wilt shot his free throws granny style that season. It was not a coincidence that he scored 100 doing that, had the highest FT% of his career , scored his highest ppg in a season etc.

Shortly after, he would abandon the granny style and go back to the less effective traditional style of free throws, because he ‘felt like a sissy’ . And wilt was not good at the traditional free throw.

https://cymbria.com/article/the-granny-shot-or-why-you-shouldnt-always-listen-to-the-crowd-4th-quarter-2020/

1. Phil Jackson used Wilt’s 48.5 mpg to challenge Shaq to play Wilt like heavy minutes in 1999-2000 . Shaq responded ‘if he could do it, so can I” . The experiment lasted a few games into November. Then Shaq sent John Salley to Phil throw the towel in. No mas. But Phil was content, because it got Shaq into shape.

https://slamonline.com/archives/phil-jackson-challenged-shaquille-oneal-play-48-minutes-per-game/

Dude was an absolute freak of nature.

It’s nuts.

how come he never got tired ??

Everything about Wilt sounds like a myth. The 20,000 women he claims to have slept with, lifting a Volkswagen with one hand, killing a mountain lion unarmed

There’s so many fanciful stories around the man that it’s hard to distinguish between fact and fiction

Happy 12th birthday fam

Extremely common knowledge

L

He played all but 7 minutes that season 

Wilt is so far ahead in many statistical categories that fans don’t even regard his records as real. Thus things like Kobe’s “record” getting broken.

What they didn’t have was modern knee and other surgeries.

Try to play modern rules and interpretations of rules back then that encourage collisions and sudden cuts, and you wouldn’t have many left to play in a very short time.

Wow bam is twice as good as Wilt was

Honestly knowing what his competition was at the time, it’s actually not as impressive. Dude had a cakewalk, probably barely had to exert himself most nights