Greatest Center You Ever Saw Play

[George O'Brien]

I am old enough to have seen Wilt on TV as a kid. Bill Russell had success against him only because Russell had some extraordinary guys playing with him. His career stats are mind boggling:

G 1,045
FG% 0.54
FT% 0.511
Rebs 23,924
RPG 22.9
Asts 4,643
APG 4.4
Pts 31,419
PPG 30.1

 

[Lars the Red]

A couple more Wilt tidbits:

-He was the only NBA player to score 4,000 points in a season. He set NBA single-game records for most points (100), most consecutive field goals (18) and most rebounds (55). He averaged 50.4 points per game during the 1961-62 season, and also averaged 48.5 minutes in that same year.

-He is tops in rebounds with 23,924. He led the NBA in scoring seven years in a row. He was the league's top rebounder in 11 of his 14 seasons. He averaged 27.2 rebounds a game in 1960, 25.4 in '61, 24.3 in '62. He also lead the league in assists in 1967-68 with 8.6. (I'm not sure this is correct, but I read it in a bio. I thought Oscar averaged over 9 that year.)

-Most games with 50+ points, 118; Most consecutive games with 40+ points, 14; Most consecutive games with 30+ points: 65; Most consecutive games with 20+ points: 126; Highest rookie scoring average: 37.6 ppg; Highest field goal percentage in a season: .727.

-His dominance precipitated many rules changes. These rules changed included widening the lane, instituting offensive goaltending and revising rules governing inbounding the ball and shooting free throws (Chamberlain would leap with the ball from behind the foul line to deposit the ball in the basket).

No player ever has, or ever will come close to these numbers. Remember that even in his later years, playing against the likes of Kareem, Willis, Unseld, Thurmond, etc., Wilt still managed to average over 19 boards a game, and was voted to the NBA All-Defensive team. He was a player of unmatched talent. During his first 7 years in the league he averaged 39.4 points. In his last 7 his production reduced to 20.7. Age was definitely a factor but Chamberlain was also asked to not shoot as much and get his team mates more involved. If he had chosen to keep shooting, it's likely he could have still been 3rd on the list playing fewer seasons and fewer games than his counterparts.

There, my nearly frightening Wilt 'lovefest' is over. Sorry to go over board, but like the Big O said when asked if Wilt was the greatest ever, 'The books don't lie'.

 

[PhxGametime]

I'm too young to know Kareem, Wilt, and Russell's game but I like O'Neal, Hakeem, and D Robinson's game... I've always really liked watching Mourning too but obviously he wasn't quite the talent overall.

OT but Amare Stoudemire is my current favorite, but I get to watch all of his games and us fans - are really the only NBA fans that know Stat is more than just a dunker... I like watching Amare like I did watching Mourning.


I'm suprised Chaplin is the only other member, that picked David Robinson as one of his..

 

[Errntknght]

Wherein does greatness lie? Wilt may have been the best basketball player but Bill Russell's teams dominated the sport for his entire playing career and Bill the heart of that team. And his career pretty much coincided with Wilts. I was a Celtic fan for a couple of years before they got Russell and while they had some very good players he transformed the team. It was amazing the way he defensively controlled the paint - or the 'key' as it was called in those days. Now, he couldn't lock Wilt down but he kept him in check and that was enough for his team to win - consistently. I don't think Wilt's team ever won a playoff series against Russell's Celtic teams.
The didn't keep stats on blocks in those days and the only statistica category Bill distinguished himself was rebounding. Typically he finished a couple rebounds per game below Wilt - imagine getting 22 boards a game and coming in second.

I noticed a couple of historical errors - mismatches with my memory, anyway. The lane was not widened in George Mikan's time - it was done during Wilts days, at least twice. I also don't think Wilt was a hurdler. His best track event as I recall was the 440 yd dash, in which he was among the best in the country. He also was a good high jumper and competed in the shot put. At the time they said that if he could pole vault at all he'd be the best decathalon athlete in the country.

 

[LakeShowMan]

I noticed a couple of historical errors - mismatches with my memory, anyway. The lane was not widened in George Mikan's time - it was done during Wilts days, at least twice. I also don't think Wilt was a hurdler. His best track event as I recall was the 440 yd dash, in which he was among the best in the country. He also was a good high jumper and competed in the shot put. At the time they said that if he could pole vault at all he'd be the best decathalon athlete in the country.

Actually according to his nba.com bio. Not only did they widen the key while Mikan played, but the NCAA outlawed goaltending, and the NBA instituted the 24 second shot clock.

http://www.nba.com/history/players/mikan_bio.html

Here are quotes:

Mikan was so hard to defend and to score against, in fact, that the NBA had to change its rules of play in order to keep him from completely overwhelming the league. Few players have had such a huge impact on the game. In 1950 Mikan was voted the greatest player of the first half of the century by The Associated Press.
...........

The notion that someone could be tall enough, and jump high enough, to deflect a ball while it was above the basket was unthinkable before the 1940s. But that changed when Mikan perfected the art of goaltending -- then a perfectly legal practice because it was considered impossible when he played college ball.

"We would set up a zone defense that had four men around the key and I guarded the basket," Mikan recalled. "When the other team took a shot, I'd just go up and tap it out." He swatted away so many would-be baskets at DePaul that the NCAA decided to outlaw goaltending.
................

Mikan did seem to single-handedly overpower the rest of the league at times, so much so that the NBA tried to make it more difficult for him to score by expanding the width of the key, from 6 feet to 12 feet. The 24-second clock also came about because of Mikan. In a game in 1950 the Fort Wayne Pistons decided that the only way they could win was to hold onto the ball and not let the Lakers have it. They ended up winning, 19-18, in the lowest-scoring game in NBA history. The league implemented the 24-second shot clock a few seasons later.
............

I put this in because it is just incredible
For the first time since Mikan had begun playing professional basketball, his team did not win a championship. Minneapolis fell to Rochester in the Western Division Finals, three games to one, largely because Mikan hobbled through the series with a fractured leg. "The doctors taped a plate on it for the playoffs," Mikan told Newsday in 1990. "I played all right, scored in the 20s. I couldn't run, sort of hopped down the court."
....................

BTW, this is a great bio on a player that not even many basketball junkies know a whole lot about.