Whenever you hear arguments about the greatest basketball player to ever play the game 9 times out of 10 you will hear the names Michael Jordan and LeBron James. I am not one of those people and this is not one of those debates. This is an article about the true greatest basketball player to ever live, Wilt Chamberlain. You probably know Wilt Chamberlain as the player who scored 100 points before your parents were alive, but there is much more to his legacy than one regular season game.
Myths and Fallacies
One of the most prominent arguments to discredit Wilt Chamberlain is the myth that Wilt was significantly taller than everyone during his era. Bill Russell, who was considered Chamberlain’s kryptonite, is commonly assumed to be the only person who physically matched up to Wilt, but this is false. Among the 9 teams in the NBA during the 1961-62 season, Wilt Chamberlain’s best year statistically, there were 13 players not including Chamberlain who were taller than 6’9, 2 other players who were 7’ or taller and, the tallest player in the NBA was not 7’1 Wilt Chamberlain, it was the 7’3 Center for the Syracuse Nationals, Swede Halbrook. The notion that height determined success was completely proven false when the New York Knicks, who had 2 players standing at 6’10 as well as 2 other players who stood at 6’9 finished tied for second to last place with a record of 29-51. Wilt Chamberlain did not just throw the ball into the hoop over everyone’s heads and he was not a giant in a league of gnomes.
Another false claim surrounding Wilt Chamberlain was that he was shut down by Bill Russell whenever they played. In the 94 regular season matchups over their careers, Wilt averaged 29.9 points and 28.1 rebounds against Russell. On top of consistently dominating Russell, Wilt achieved one of his greatest records against Russell when he grabbed 55 rebounds in one game. Bill Russell may have played Chamberlain the hardest, but Wilt still dominated regardless of who his opponent was. Bill Russell won 57 of the 94 games, but averaged 14.2 points and 22.0 rebounds.
The third most commonly used slander to Wilt Chamberlain was that he did not win. Wilt retired with only 2 NBA Finals victories. He very well should have had 3 Championship Rings, but you can look up the ending to the 1969 Finals. Wilt Chamberlain is deemed a stat padder and a loser due to the incredible 11 championships Bill Russell’s Celtics won. Wilt Chamberlain takes the most flack for the championships the Celtics obtained, but that is because the Celtics had 8 Hall of Famers on the team during their championship run, that is 5 starters and 3 players coming off the bench that were Hall of Fame caliber. You might not even find 8 Hall of Famers on one single All-Star team. And this extraordinary team did not completely dominate Wilt, Chamberlain pushed 4 different playoff series to a Game 7 against the Boston Celtics and also lost in a Game 7 in the 1969-70 Finals against the New York Knicks. If Chamberlain had anywhere close to as many all-time great teammates as the Celtics had his championship count would be significantly higher.
Arguably the Greatest Athlete of All Time
Wilt Chamberlain’s greatness had a lot to do with the athleticism he possessed. This segment could go right in with the myths against him, but his athletic feats are too plentiful to not have its own category. People like to say that if you put other great players in this era, such as Shaquille O’Neal, they would dominate even more than Wilt did, but this is disproven by the physical attributes Wilt had without the science of health and training that the players of today have.
Wilt Chamberlain’s natural born athleticism was seen before he was a professional in any sport. During his time at the University of Kansas, Wilt was asked to join the Track & Field team at the University and his basketball coach, Dick Harp, granted Wilt permission to join the team. Wilt had no prior history to track and field before joining the program, but by the time he left Kansas after his Junior year, Wilt had won a Big Seven Conference Championship for high jump during both the indoor and outdoor championships.
Track and Field was not the only sport Wilt was ready to try his hand at, he also had an opportunity to play on the gridiron. The Head Coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, 2003 Football Hall of Fame inductee Hank Stram, met with Wilt Chamberlain about the idea of playing football. In their meeting, Wilt Chamberlain ran a 40-yard dash, he ran it in 4.6 seconds, without shoes on. The average 40-yard dash by Wide Receivers at the NFL Combine between 2000-2012 is 4.48 seconds. In a book Stram wrote, he states that Wilt was the greatest receiver he had ever seen due to his incredible size and speed and was even better than Hall of Fame Wide Receiver Jerry Rice. Wilt ultimately did not join the Kansas City Chiefs because he would’ve rather been a Quarterback.
You thought Wilt Chamberlain would stop after trying 3 sports right? Wrong. After his NBA Career ended at age 37, Wilt Chamberlain joined the International Volleyball Association. To nobody’s surprise, the 7’1 NBA Legend dominated the sport winning the IVA All-Star game MVP and was later inducted into the Volleyball Hall of Fame.
Among his diverse success around the sports world, there are personal accounts of a few other unbelievably athletic things Wilt did in his lifetime. It is said that Wilt Chamberlain ran a sub-11-second 100-yard dash in track and field practice at the University of Kansas and threw a 16-pound shot put 56 feet. During NBA workouts, it is claimed that 7’1 Chamberlain recorded a 48-inch vertical, for reference Michael Jordan’s best was 46 inches. It is also said that in his physical prime, Wilt Chamberlain’s max Bench Press was 500 pounds, and when he was 59 years old, he benched 465 pounds. World renowned Body Builder, Arnold Schwarzenegger is on record saying that Wilt Chamberlain is the strongest person he has ever met. Arnold and Wilt often trained together during the filming of Conan the Barbarian in 1982, Wilt was in his late 40’s.
Domination on the Hardwood
Do I have your attention yet? Wilt Chamberlain was clearly as close to a living super hero as we have ever seen, and many of the rumors you thought true are false. So how good at basketball was Wilt Chamberlain? There is no other word to use other than dominant. Wilt Chamberlain opposed his will at both ends of the court. He cared about scoring just as much as he cared about getting blocks and ending possessions. Wilt Chamberlain had a very competitive personality with everything he did, he wanted to be the star of the show and the best at everything he did. And he did just that during his 14 year NBA career.
Over the entirety of his career, Wilt Chamberlain averaged 30 points, 22.9 rebounds, and 45.8 minutes per game. Wilt was instantly producing the day he got into the league through the 1970-71 seasons. Wilt only (ONLY) averaged 13.2 points and 18.6 rebounds in 43.2 minutes per game in his final season at age 36. In Wilt’s first season at age 23 he averaged 37.6 points and 27 rebounds. In a league of grown men he came in and did whatever he wanted. He kept up consistent numbers from his rookie year for 12 straight years, but his most notable season was the 1961-62 season. That season was his third year in the league. He had figured out the most efficient way to enforce his will and how the league worked. Wilt was as close to a living robot as we will ever see due to the fact he averaged more minutes per game than there are minutes in a game. Yes, you read that correctly, Wilt averaged 48.5 minutes per game in a league where there are 48 minutes in a game. Chamberlain played every minute in every game this season including multiple overtime games. And that isn’t the most impressive stat of the 1961-62 season. While never taking a minute to rest, Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds per game. Wilt Chamberlain was the most incredible player the world has ever seen this season. Those numbers have never gotten close to being matched and never will be.
During this time, blocked shots were not considered an official stat and were not recorded until 1973. Towards the back end of his career with the Lakers, the team began to keep a log of his blocked shots. There are 112 games in which the team counted how many shots he blocked. Over the span of these 112 appearances, Wilt Chamberlain averaged 8.8 blocks per game, for reference, the current NBA Record for blocked shots over an NBA season is 5.4 blocks per game. It is safe to say that in the other 850 games he played in his younger days he put up similar, if not better numbers in this category. On top of recording this many blocks defensively, Wilt Chamberlain never fouled out of a game in his entire career. Among other incredible stats, Wilt Chamberlain had 124 different instances where he put up at least 30 points and 30 rebounds. The combination of Shaquille O’Neal, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Bill Russell, and every person to play in the NBA that is not named Wilt Chamberlain has a total of 32.
Wilt Chamberlain holds a vast amount of the NBA Individual Records, 68 official records to be exact, we won’t go through that entire list, but here some mind-boggling records that haven’t already been mentioned. Wilt Chamberlain has recorded the most 50-point games with 118, the second most is Michael Jordan with 31, and also has the most 60-point games with 32. No other Center has averaged more assists in a season than Chamberlain’s 8.6 assists per Game. Wilt Chamberlain also scored the most points in a season with 4,029 points in the 1961-62 season, the second most is Michael Jordan’s roughly 3,043 points in the 1986-87 season.
The GOAT
Wilt Chamberlain’s consistent dominance of the game is obvious when looking back at what he did in his career. He won championships, set records, and played at a level nobody can ever reach in their career. If Wilt Chamberlain was in any era he would still dominate the game due to his sheer athleticism which would only improve with the evolution of player training and medicine. He did not have a perfect record in the Finals, he did not win the most championships, but those are team accomplishments. Nobody is trying to say that Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest NBA Franchise or single team in the NBA, but he is the greatest basketball player individually. If he was not significantly better than anyone who ever played his statistics would not have such a wide gap from the rest of history. If it was so easy to do back in his era, then why did no other player put up numbers in the same ballpark than Wilt did? Why is the Finals MVP award named after Bill Russell if it was so easy to play in this era? It was not an easy era to dominate, Wilt was just that much better at the game. Yes, it was a different era, and the numbers are skewed to an extent, but no player has created such a gap in their own era from the rest of the field than Wilt Chamberlain did. The Greatest Basketball Player of All Time should be centered around how dominant a player was in their era and how much better they were than everyone around them, and Chamberlain was the definition of that. We will never see a player like Wilt Chamberlain because what he did was unimaginable. If the game of basketball was as popular as it is now and we had the media coverage, Wilt would be the clear front runner as the GOAT. But basketball took off during the Jordan era and there is plenty of film to watch from his time. The world is deprived of that luxury with Wilt Chamberlain, most of his accounts are written in books, newspapers, and game logs. He is the forgotten legend that took over the game in a way nobody else could. Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest basketball player to ever live.
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