No. 5 - Wilt Chamberlain

In the 1961-1962 NBA season, Wilt Chamberlain scored 50 or more points in 45 games. He had 15 games of 60 or more. Two with more than 70, and of course, the 100-point effort against the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on March 2, 1962. Although Chamberlain was years ahead of his peers in size and athleticism, those points didn’t come entirely against bums. He had games of 50, 52, 53 and 62 against Bill Russell and the Celtics.

In 2017-2018, NBA players hit the 50-point mark just 13 times.

Yet, in my system, I have four players who are greater than Chamberlain.

There are a few reasons why Wilt checks in at No. 5. There was a slight difference between regular season Wilt and playoff Wilt. His early year teams had some uneven performances. And he played just 13 seasons.

Let’s look at his statistics, which are pretty overwhelming.

Wilt led the league in scoring seven times and rebounding 11. He even had five seasons where he was in the top 10 in assists per game, including the 1967-1968 season where he led the league in total assists but finished second to Oscar Robertson in assist average. He has five of the six highest scoring average seasons in history and six of the top seven rebounding averages. He remains second all-time in career scoring average to Michael Jordan and No. 1 in rebounding average over Russell.

He was a colossus.

His advanced stats are just as impressive. He led the league in PER and Win Shares eight times each. The only player to lead the NBA in PER more often was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who did it nine times. The only players to lead the league in Win Shares more often are Abdul-Jabbar and Michael Jordan. And it wasn’t as if he was doing this in a losing cause. His teams, which including stints with the Warriors, 76ers and Lakers, won 64.4 percent of their games.

If you’re talking about regular season performance, Wilt is squarely in the middle of the GOAT conversation.

But my system weights the playoffs equally to the regular season and there is validity to the argument that Wilt wasn’t the ultimate winner.

My dad was from Pennsylvania and therefore a Wilt fan. When we had our first conversations about who was the greatest basketball player – long before Jordan and LeBron James came along – he had a simple observation. Wilt’s 1966-1967 team won a record 68 games in the regular season and went 11-4 in the playoffs. Wilt then went to the Lakers where his 1971-1972 Lakers won a record 69 games and went 12-3 in the playoffs. His two title teams were better than any other team – to that point – in NBA/ABA history.

Wilt’s 1966-1967 season is his best in my system and was the best of all time until Jordan and James came along. Wilt sacrificed his scoring to increase his passing. His points per game fell from 33.5 to 24.1 and his PER from 28.3 to 26.5. But his Win Shares increased, the 76ers rolled to the title and Wilt was the consensus MVP and king of the basketball world.

The other seasons, well, Wilt in the playoffs was not the same as Wilt in the regular season. Here’s how his PER stacks up each season. Wilt played before Box +/- and VORP were calculated.

Wilt regular season vs. postseason
	PER
Year	Season	Playoffs
1959-1960	28.0	27.0
1960-1961	27.8	26.7
1961-1962	31.7	29.7
1963-1964	31.6	31.3
1964-1965	28.6	27.1
1965-1966	28.3	26.0
1966-1967	26.5	25.3
1967-1968	24.7	22.7
1968-1969	21.9	18.3
1969-1970	24.8	20.3
1970-1971	20.3	19.1
1971-1972	18.5	17.8
1972-1973	19.1	16.7

As you can see, there wasn’t a single season where Wilt was more dominant in the playoffs. Of course, Wilt was still dominant. He had seven straight playoff seasons above 25.0 PER. Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal had eight straight playoff runs above 25.0 PER and James has topped that level the past seven years. When it comes to the top five players of all time, you are just arguing degrees of greatness.

Wilt also missed out on a lot of playoff points. In 1962-1963, despite Wilt averaging 44.8 points per game and 24.3 rebounds, his San Francisco Warriors went just 31-49 and missed the playoffs by a wide margin. That cost Wilt valuable playoff points. His 1960-1961 Philadelphia Warriors team got swept in the first round by the Syracuse Nats – featuring 32-year-old Dolph Schayes - even though Wilt averaged 37 points and 23 rebounds. And his 1965-1966 76ers – coached by Dolph Schayes – lost in five games in the first round to the Celtics. That’s a couple of seasons where deep playoff runs would have helped his 10-year and career scores.

Then there’s the fact that Chamberlain played just 13 NBA seasons. Part of it was the times. The NBA didn’t take players until their four years of college eligibility was up. Wilt didn’t play his freshman year at Kansas because of NCAA rules, led the Jayhawks to the NCAA title game his sophomore year and then got bored his junior year as teams spent most of the year stalling. Since the NBA wouldn’t take him, he famously joined the Harlem Globetrotters instead of going back to Kansas for his senior year and saw the world. So Wilt didn’t come to the league until he was 23.

In 1972-1973, Wilt’s Lakers lost to the New York Knicks in five games and Wilt surprised the basketball world by signing with the ABA to be player coach of the San Diego Conquistadors. The Lakers sued and the courts ruled Wilt had to sit out a year to satisfy the option year in his Lakers contract. This was a common occurrence. Players such as Rick Barry and Billy Cunningham were forced to sit out years. Wilt was an indifferent coach and San Diego drew less than 2,000 fans in his year on the bench. Rather than play in empty gyms, Wilt retired and passed on repeated attempts to draw him back into action.

In Wilt’s last year in the NBA, he led the league in rebounding (18.6 per game), averaged 4.5 assists per game and shot 72.7 percent from the field. That’s a record that still stands. Clearly, Wilt could have held on several more years. Even three more NBA seasons likely would have pulled him up four places in the career rankings, which would have placed him at No. 4.  

Wilt Chamberlain bio info
Career	1959-1973
Games	1,045
Points	30.1
Rebounds	22.9
Assists	4.4
FG Pct.	54.0%
All-Star games	15
NBA MVPs	4
NBA titles	2
Playoff seasons	13
Playoff games	160
Points	22.5
Rebounds	24.5
Assists	4.2
FG Pct.	52.2%
Hall of Fame	1979

Top 100 rankings
	Points	Top 100 ranking
1-year	487.52	3rd
5-year	2,041.09	7th
10-year	3,679.27	6th
Career	4,652.01	9th

               

Wilt Chamberlain at his peak
1966-1967	Chamberlain	Top 5	Points
PER	26.5	23.80
Win Shares	21.9	15.55
Box +/-	NA	NA
VORP	NA	NA
Total Advanced Stats	48.4	39.35	123.01
Playoff PER	25.3	21.88
Win Shares	3.8	2.26
Box +/-	NA	NA
VORP	NA	NA
Total Advanced Stats	29.1	24.14	120.56
Reg. Season Win %	83.95		83.95
Playoff Win %	73.33		73.33
MVP Voting (75 points)	444/540		61.67
Playoff MVP (25 points)	25.0		25.00
Total Score			487.52

               

Chamberlain’s 10 greatest seasons
1966-1967	487.52
1963-1964	393.93
1959-1960	392.05
1967-1968	387.18
1961-1962	380.41
1971-1972	368.10
1965-1966	351.82
1964-1965	318.38
1968-1969	300.81
1960-1961	299.06

Career winning percentage
	W	L	Pct.
Regular Season	672	371	64.43%
Playoffs	88	72	55.00%