Wilt Chamberlain: Fact Or Fiction
When discussing the legends of any sports league, it's important to know what is fact and what is fiction. The more dominant the player, the more misinformation that's out there.
No athlete in any professional sport has been more dominant than Wilt Chamberlain, so it's only natural that basketball fans would hear facts and statistics that sound suspect. This piece will shed some light on his incredible achievements, and which things are completely untrue.
Fact: Wilt Was Unstoppable On Offense
The masses may be familiar with Wilt's 100-point game. The image of him holding a piece of paper with "100" written on it is as popular an image as any meme that's ever been posted on social media. What may be lesser known is just how unstoppable a scorer he was.
Wilt has the highest scoring average in a season for a player in NBA History (50.4 points per game). He also ranks second (44.8), third (38.4), fourth (37.6), and sixth (36.9), Michael Jordan (37.1) keeps the Big Dipper from holding every spot in the top five. Wilt also has 118 career games where he scored over 50 points. MJ comes in second with 31. That's an 87-game difference.
Fiction: Wilt Was Doing It Against Smaller Competition
The claim that Wilt played against smaller competition is not complete fiction, just overexaggerated. People will say some nonsense like, "Wilt played against 6'5 hardware store cashiers."
For starters, every player that Wilt Chamberlain played against was a professional basketball player. There were only eight teams in the league, with 15 spots per team. This means that Wilt's competition was the top 119 players on planet Earth.
As far as height goes, the average center in Chamberlain's day stood 6'10. The average height of a center that Shaquille O'Neal dominated was 6'11. Anyway, if height was actually that big a difference, Yao Ming and Shawn Bradley would be the best players ever.
Fact: Wilt Did More Than Score
Wilt may always be known as the best scorer in league history, but he was so much more than that. He is also the greatest rebounder in league history. He led the league 11 times and finished his career with an average of 22.9 boards per game.
In fact, if you add up every rebound collected in 31 seasons played by Dennis Rodman and Ben Wallace (22,436) you would still have fewer rebounds than Wilt had in 15 seasons (23,924). What happens when you combine his scoring and rebounding numbers?
Chamberlain had 124 games where he recorded 30 points and 30 rebounds. Second place all-time is Bill Russell, who had three 30/30 games. Wilt also had eight career 40/40 games. Every other player in NBA history combined has zero.
He also is the only center in history to lead the league in assists (1967-68). Though the NBA did not officially track blocks or steals in Wilt's day, he did have an unofficial quintuple-double on March 18, 1968 (53 points, 32 rebounds, 14 assists, 24 blocked shots, and 11 steals).
Fiction: Bill Russell Shut Down Wilt
It is true that the Boston Celtics had a winning record against Wilt Chamberlain, but that's going to happen when the worst team they ever rolled out had five Hall of Famers at once, and the best team had eight. That's right! Three players that came off the bench for the Celtics made the Hall of Fame. Do you still think the Miami Heat were the first super team?
Head to head, Wilt averaged 29.9 points and 28.1 rebounds against Russell, who averaged 14.2 points and 22.9 rebounds respectively against Chamberlain. Wilt also recorded eight career triple-doubles against Russell. With all due respect, if that is shutting a guy down, I wish everyone who guarded me would shut me down.
Fact: Wilt Was The Greatest Athlete In Any Sport, Ever
This is really more my opinion than it is a fact, but Wilt's athleticism was absolutely off the charts. Wilt stood 7'2 and weighed 275 pounds. He had a 40" vertical and won every high jump competition he ever entered. He ran the 100m sprint in 11.00 seconds (DK Metcalf runs it in 10.50). Chamberlain is said to have bench pressed 650 pounds in his prime, and 450 pounds when he was in his fifties.
After he retired from basketball, he took up a new sport in professional volleyball, where he also had a Hall of Fame career. This is a player who was bigger and stronger than prime Shaquille O'Neal but with the speed of an NFL wide receiver, and the leaping ability of Vince Carter. How did he not average 75 ppg for his career?
Fiction: Wilt Is Not The Goat
What more proof do you need? Wayne Gretzky retired 25 years ago and still holds 61 NHL records. He is widely considered the GOAT of hockey, and any other player suggested is met with scoffs or laughter. Wilt retired 51 years ago, and he still holds 70 NBA records. They changed the rules specifically to keep him from dominating more than he already did.
Steph Curry famously said that he's glad there wasn't a three-point line in Wilt's day because Chamberlain would then hold all the three-point records as well. After all, 60% of Wilt's baskets came by way of the jump shot. There may not be a GOAT in the NBA, but if there was, how could you possibly make a case against Wilt?
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