It's hard to believe what Drexlerfan22 is saying about Wilt, but it's true. I think he gave a very fair comparison between the centers he mentioned. Wilt never had the quality of players surrounding him that Russell had with the Celtics, or Wilt would have had a row of trophies... just like Bill. Shaq gets away with murder, at least with the calls. He hammers people left, right, and center... and gets away with it. I wouldn't say he's better than 5th best all-time. That's pretty damn good. David is (was) a great center, but not in the same class as Wilt, Dream, Russell, Kareem, and Shaq. (IMHO)
I just have a hard time comparing players from different eras. If Wilt actually did score 100 points per game, there was quite simply something very different with the league at that time. The fact that some team would actually let one player score 100 points does not give me a very good impression of the state of the league back then.
Strange things happen in sports. You just never know. I'm sure they didn't just stand around and watch! I saw the U. of H. Cougars (football team) beat Oklahoma State by the score of 100 to 6 at the Astrodome. We had our third stringers in there trying not to run up the score, and the Oklahoma St. players were just being carried off on stretchers... being clobbered by our guys from the end of the bench. Towards the end of the game, the crowd started chanting "We wanna hundred! We wanna hundred!", and they got it. (State beat the Cougs the next year. Who would of thunk it!) There were far, far fewer teams in the NBA during Wilt's era. They played the game a bit differently in some ways than we do now, but you could argue that the talent was much more concentrated than today. Some players are so good, the League ends up changing the rules to make it "fairer" for the other players. Wilt was one of those players.
Sure, if you go down and measure categories (athleticism, shooting, awareness, etc), Olajuwon outweighs Shaq. But that doesn't mean necessarily mean he would match up better with him. Hakeem having to play the mature Shaq on D would mean lots and lots of fouls for Hakeem, far more than Robnson or Ewing, or Shaq 95 drew. He wouldn't be able to guard him from the bench.
My old high school basketball coach used to do that sometimes for us. I think he was able to hold himself up for around 10-20 minutes. I knew a guy at a basketball camp a while back that was able to do the same thing too. Impressive stuff. BTW, I'm still wondering how they were able to measure Wilt's vertical of 55 inches.
About the 100 point game... Wilt took 63 shots that game (which was obviously a bizarre amount of shots), and made 36. The Knicks certainly weren't just standing there either: one of the major reasons that game happened was that Wilt got 32 free throws and made 28 of them. Imagine Shaq shooting 88% free throws, and you can see what I mean. Lastly, that game didn't matter in terms of the playoffs; it was one of the last games of the season. The Knicks (the team he did it against) said that Wilt's team went out looking to get Wilt 100 in that game. That may be exaggeration, but after Wilt had a 50+ point first half, it's not hard to believe that Wilt's teammates were thinking 100, since it didn't matter if they won or not. I'm fairly sure it was measured at a college track meet (at Kansas). Again, it can be seen in A View From Above. Measuring the vertical? I can only speculate, but I imagine they used the age-old method: give the guy a piece of chalk, have him reach up as high as he can and mark a wall. Then jump, mark as high as possible, and measure the distance between.
I forgot to answer this. I'll try and keep it short. Let me help you visualize both Wilts. I'll say Young Wilt is first 7 years, Old(er) Wilt is last 7 years. It's convenient since first 7 years are all the ones where he was leading the league in scoring . OLD WILT: This one is easy. Think of Shaq... got him in your head? Now, make him better in every way. Seriously. And not as dumb. That's Old Wilt. AVERAGE GAME FOR OLD WILT: 19.8 pts, 20.8 reb, 5.6 ast, 44.5 min, 7.9/12.8 FGs, 61% FGs. BEST SEASON FOR OLD WILT: 1966-67, 24.1 pts, 24.2 reb, 7.8 ast, 45.5 min, 9.7/14.2 FGs, 68.3% FGs. YOUNG WILT: Like I said, led the league in scoring every year for his first 7 years. His points average overall was about 38, with his famous high of 50 over a season and 100 in a game. Okay, think Robinson's height and speed. Then make him 275 pounds, and give him that crazy 55 inch vertical. Make him stronger, and give him Duncan's shot (especially the tendency to go off the glass). Better handles than both (he played PG for the Globetrotters ). That's Young Wilt. AVERAGE GAME FOR YOUNG WILT: 39.5 pts, 24.8 reb, 3.4 ast, 47.0 min, 16.1/31.4 FGs, 51% FGs. BEST SEASON FOR YOUNG WILT: 1961-62, 50.4 pts, 25.7 reb, 2.4 ast, 48.5 min, 20.0/39.5 FGs, 50.6% FGs. But there's something that you must realize about Wilt's jumper, the thing that made him really unstoppable: he had that crazy vertical! He's 7'1" when most centers are 6'10", he's jumping 50 inches off the ground, and he's usually fading away. That's about as unblockable as Kareem's skyhook. Oh yeah, and he's faster than you. And stronger. Uhhh... You'll notice in his Laker days that Wilt's shot was very flat, and he almost always went glass. That's because he wasn't jumping as high! He was practically shooting down at the basket in his younger days. The reason he developed more post moves is the centers were slightly taller (maybe an inch overall) and his hops weren't as good. He couldn't just randomly jump over people anymore, so he found other ways to beat them. SO WHICH IS BETTER? Old Wilt fit into an offense better (and won 2 championships), while Young Wilt put up crazy stats and won nothing. So the real question is: do you want to win championships or sell tickets? . Too close to call. Depends on what he has around him. Lots of talent? Old Wilt. Team sucks? Young Wilt.
No one really knows. It seems like it was all in Wilt's head, but again, when you can jump as high as he did, plus you like to bank shots, shooting it from the ground becomes more difficult. I'll just give you a bunch of direct quotes from Tall Tales by Terry Pluto, and you can figure it out: Dolph Schayes (Wilt's coach, and a great foul-shooter himself): Wilt will say he's the greatest at everything- basketball, bowling, pinball, you name it. But not foul shooting, and he desperatley wanted to be a good free throw shooter. The two of us would go to the gym by ourselves and practice, shooting 100 free throws. He'd make 80-85 of them. But in the games, he'd tighten up, shoot 1-for-10, 3-for-11. He'd line the ball off the rim. He worked so hard and got nothing out of it. Wilt Chamberlain: I always believed I was a good free throw shooter in high school. Now I know I was because a guy gave me a scrapbook with clippings from my days at Overbrook. They'd write, "And then they started to foul Chamberlain, which was a mistake." I looked at the box scores and saw games where I was 7-for-8, 11-for-12. I asked myself, "What the hell ever happened to those days?" Alex Hannum (another of Wilt's coaches): He'd practice his free-thows all the time and probably shoot 75%. Frank McGuire (another of Wilt's coaches): I suggested he try shooting them underhanded, because it would give him a softer shot. He shot underhanded the rest of that season, but then he got away from it. Al Attles (teammate): He shot with two hands, with one hand, underhanded. It was said he was too close to the basket, so he stood about three feet behind the foul line. He tried shooting from off to the side. Larry Costello (teammate): The fans would start yelling when Wilt went to the line. He'd grab the ball and shoot quick, almost as if he wanted to miss the shot and get it over with so he could get away from the free-throw line. Earl Strom (the great referee): Wilt told me, "Everybody tells me that free throw shooting is nothing but concentration. Damn it, I concentrate more at the line than anywhere else and I still miss." But I'd watch him and you could see Wilt holding the ball and thinking to himself, "I'm gonna miss... I'm gonna miss." Wilt Chamberlain: After a while, it didn't matter how much I practiced, how I shot, I wasn't going to shoot well. It was all mental. In practice, I'd make 80%. Then the games would come... Rod Thorn: Wilt was the reason they put in a rule to stop players from intentionally fouling away from the ball. Everyone was just grabbing Wilt and making the game last forever. Rick Barry: Wilt would have shot 75% from the line if he had stuck with shooting underhanded and learned the proper technique. But he experimented so much that he never had a feel for how he wanted to shoot free throws. Can you imagine the records he would have set if he had shot 75% from the line? Wilt Chamberlain: But let's talk about one thing that no one remembers. I may have missed a lot of foul shots, but by me going to the line so much, that meant my team got into the penalty situation faster and my teammates got to shoot more free throws. Besides, if I made 75%, then what would people have to talk about? PS: BTW, I never said Wilt had a better shot than Duncan. I really couldn't say who was more accurate, it's too close to call. However, I did say he never had to worry about being blocked . That tends to help. Now that I think of it, Duncan had that season where he shot free-throws horribly, but then he improved again. Hmmm... interesting.
Duncan's "horrible" FT shooting was 61.8 percent, and that's his low point. Duncan shot 79-80% this year. Wilt's best season was 61.3 percent and that was his only year above 60%, so it's not fair to compare Duncan's one year of bad free throw shooting to Wilt's career long struggles with it. Interesting quotes on Wilt. I don't know if you can take too much stock into Wilt's quotes though, he seems to exaggerate a lot (i.e. 20,000 women ) What other people said about Wilt's FT shooting are very similar to what others say about Shaq's FT shooting today. Pretty interesting. It's a shame I never got to actually see Wilt play, it seems like he would have been an absolute thrill to watch.
You are right, only olympic gold medalist caliber sprinters broke 10 seconds, and not that often unitl the late 90's. What he did was probably run the 100yard dash in under 10 seconds, which is about 90 or 91 meters or so, and a fairly common distance race back in those days
