1st and 10: How would Wilt do in today's NBA (Anyone catch this today?)

[Dbrog]

Put him on Phoenix and Prime numbers looks like they do back in the 60s. 50ppg/20rpg I think could still be possible in that offense (maybe bring the pts down to 40 or something).

[Simple Jack]

Put him on Phoenix and Prime numbers looks like they do back in the 60s. 50ppg/20rpg I think could still be possible in that offense (maybe bring the pts down to 40 or something).

Almost every team back then was averaging over 114 points per game. The pace of the game was so much faster and had on average over 20+ more possessions per game.

The fact of the matter is, a few rule changes, defensive schemes, average athleticism would lead to a HUGE decrease in Wilt's performance and numbers.

Now let me start off by saying that if Wilt, Russell, Oscar, etc. grew up today, they would most definitely be amazing with their natural talent, modern medicine, technology; but if we take them straight out of their primes and plug them into today's league or even the 90's they'd have some serious trouble getting the stats they did.

Wilt wasn't worrying about a 6'10 help defender coming to snatch the ball out. He wasn't worrying about a 7 footer who can shoot 3's and spread the floor out more than most shooting guards. You don't think they'd keep him out of the paint or double him as soon as he got the ball from 12+ feet out? He wouldn't be able to stand around all day in the paint with the 3-second rule.

The league as a whole today is more athletic, bigger stronger, more conditioned. Coaches have seen and played against almost every defensive or offensive scheme you can imagine. Do you think Cousy would be able to body up someone like Baron Davis or Allen Iverson? It's the evolution of sports. It happens in every sport and will continue to happen. It makes sense, just think about it. You now have people competing from around the world to play in the NBA. The talent pool is so immense compared to back then, it's ridiculous.

[andgar923]

Ignore this post if some other posters mentioned the same thing.

But....

In today's weak era, filled with soft big men, and no interior threat, I do see Wilt averaging close to 35 and 15.

Why?

Because he was skilled!!!

He had a turnaround, he had a mid range, fallaway jumper, running hook, hookshot from just about anywhere, he could jump outta the gym, he was 7 ft tall with long wingspan.

If Dwight Howard can dominate like he can, with a tenth of the talent that Wilt had, of course Wilt would embarrass all 3 centers of today. And he weighed more than Howard as well ( Howard is currently listed as 265, Wilt is listed as 275). Howard's dominance comes from his athletic abilities, now.... add Howard's athletic abilities (even tho Wilt was more athletic, but that's another argument) with an actual skilled game. A player that can pass, shoot, has multiple post up moves in and away from the paint, 35 and 15 is very reasonable.

[Sir Charles]

Look Wilt outrebounded Kareem by miles, shot at a higher FG% and held his own from: 1969-70 to 1971-72 and this is what Kareem achieved vs Hakeem in their 29 meetings from 1984-85 to 1989-90:

Remember this...

[COLOR="Blue"]Kareem: 37-41 Years Old (atleast 4-5 years passed his prime and Yes! no where near his physical prime)[/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]Hakeem: 22-27 (total physical prime and practically prime)[/COLOR]

http://www.basketball-reference.com/...1&p2=olajuha01

[COLOR="Blue"]Kareem: 15.2 PPG on 56.7% FG Shooting (Far from Stoping Him! ), 5.8 RPG, 1.4 BPG, 1.4 APG and 0.5 SPG but in ONLY 28.4 MPG[/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]Hakeem: 21.8 PPG on 47.5% FG Shooting (Kareem lowered his FG! ), 11.9 RPG, 3.0 APG, 2.5 SPG and 2.6 BPG but IN 37.8 MPG[/COLOR]

Kareem held his own agains the Dream while playing lesser minutes, making more FGs, Taking Less FGAs PG , Shooting 9% FG Superior to Hakeem and playing 9.4 MPG Lesser (a quarter pretty much)

Wilt would not dominate today?

[stephanieg]

Everyone keeps saying that he get dominated because everyone today is bigger etc.

Who's saying that? They're retarded. Most of the C's in the league right now are PFs playing out of position. Wilt is friggin' huge anyway. Hint: guys like Hakeem and Ewing aren't really seven feet tall. Neither is Dwight.

Ummm if Wilt played in Today's he'd be as conditioned as well as Today's NBA players, correct?

He's probably the most conditioned seven footer ever considering his track and field experience plus the fact the NBA was played at a 110+ pace when he played and he played for 48 minutes a game (more, sometimes).


When he was younger he was a pogo stick (emphasis on stick):





As he entered the latter years he bulked up into a huge beast:

[Cavs2007Champs]

One amazing thing I noticed about Wilt's defense from a few videos, was the way he blocked or altered shots.

When he made a block he kept the ball inbounds every time (except in 1 play) and then that block led to a fastbreak, and a few of those fastbreaks I noticed Wilt finishing it also.

I don't get why so many big men today don't try to keep the ball inbounds, I know it's more highlight worthy to swat it into the stands, but if you can keep it inbounds or even just snatch the damn thing, then your team can start a fast break.

Wilt would be very dominant in today's game, the physique he had in the latter years of his career would have fared very well, due to the weight and size he gained.

Wilt was an FREAK of nature, and he'd excel in modern times.

[Psileas]

He scored 100 points on a stiff team and ball hogging/being fed the ball for the record, come the playoffs he averaged 22ppg and only won 2 chips, 1 of them as nowhere near the best player on his team.Much like Kobe could do it against the stiffs but cracked up when it really mattered.End of the day regular season is a warmup, playoffs are where it matters.James white can jump longer than anyone ive seen yet he sucks in the nba.

A lot of the things you posted make zero sense. First of all, come the playoffs, Wilt averaged 35 ppg that season, not 22. 22.5 is his career average, so the 22 number is a wrong generalization. Second, Wilt never in his career was "nowhere near the best player on his team", except if we're talking only about scoring, which he reduced to his own will. There were times when people would say that a 20 ppg Wilt could score no more, then he'd go in the next game and drop 60.
You mentioned Kobe? Kobe was a non factor in lots of crucial playoff games, with the Lakers getting blown out in some of them. Check the last game in 2003 vs San Antonio, 2004 vs Detroit, 2006 vs Phoenix, 2007 vs Phoenix, 2008 vs Boston. At least, even when Wilt lost series:

1) His team didn't get blown out nearly as often.
2) During crucial games he didn't have that many underperformances.
3) Even when he didn't score as much as he was expected to, he still did a lot of other things. For example, Wilt only twice grabbed less than 20 rebounds in the last game of any playoff series he played, won or lost.
4) Wilt, apart from one case, always lost to the eventual champions (and usually to the team with the best defense in the league). Phoenix, for Kobe's case, never had anything resembling the best defense in the league.

And what does James White have to do with Wilt? Wilt has plenty of basketball talent and proved so. White, except from dunking, proved nothing.

If you compare his 1961-1962 season to Shaq's 1999-2000 season using league averages and give him 40 mpg.

33.0 ppg, 14.7 rpg, 1.8 apg, 53.3 FG%, 61.3 FT%, 24.8 FGA

Yes I did factor in the team rebounds stat when adjusting that. Now that is simply by adjusting pace and minutes, so it's highly doubtful that he gets 2 more ppg against today's slightly bigger, more athletic players.

I gave him less minutes because there's no way in hell he'd play near 48.5 in today's league. Team's value stars too much and nobody has come close. I gave him 40 because that's what Shaq played in 2000 and Jordan's career high in mpg was 40.4 so that's fair.

I also highly doubt any big man could get 24.8 FGA in the modern era, if you give him the 21.1 FGA Shaq averaged in 2000 then Wilt's adjusted ppg becomes 28.1 ppg. That seems a bit low, but more realistic than 35.

In reality I think Wilt's best scoring seasons would have been in the 29-30 ppg range. Shaq did that 3-4 times and David Robinson did that once so I could imagine Wilt doing that a few times as well.

For rebounds I'd say he'd drop from closer to 15(adjusted) down to about 14.

If you want me to give an estimate for early to mid 60's Wilt I'll say 29.5 ppg, 14 rpg, 3 apg, 3 bpg, 56 FG%. So pretty much prime Shaq type numbers.

There's more to it than just adjusting for pace, when it comes to faster vs slower eras:

1) Faster paced eras generally favor non-star players, since there are generally less passes and there's a better chance that the player who has the ball will shoot. This hurts centers the most, although Wilt was the fastest center in the league.

2) As a consequence of this, a slower paced league, will most often have a higher scoring efficiency. Players with low scoring talent would shoot less, ill-adviced shots would be less, etc. Now, I did notice that you scaled his percentages up, but in this case, overall scoring will go up, as well. I don't know if you did this, but you certainly didn't do so when adjusting 24.8 fga to Shaq's ones.

3) The per minute efficiency of someone resting for 8 minutes per game can't be the same with the per minute efficiency of someone not resting at all in the same way that if a player can produce 20 ppg in 30 minutes, it's not exactly fair to claim that if he played 40 he would produce 26.7. If he could play 40 minutes and retain the same efficiency, he would do so.

4) There's another reason pace has gone down considerably. It's not just the need for higher efficiency. Tougher defenses play a role to this, as well. When you adjust 60's pace to 00's pace, this means that you also adjust 60's to 00's defenses, therefore it's not really fair to scale down the numbers even more (from 33 ppg to 29.5 in our case), because the adjustment already means that all the 60's centers of our adjusted league actually grow up in today's era and play similarly to today's players. In other words, there's no reason to adjust the pace of a 60's league to a pace of a 00's league and assume that 60's players still play like they used to. Having said that, I'd easily rank the "modern equivalent" of the average center of Wilt's NBA over the average center of today and would actually scale the final stats up.

5) Even after adjusting, the 3 bpg estimation is low. A player like Ewing blocked more than 3 shots per game in his prime during even slower eras.

(There's a 6th point I'd like to add, but forgot it while writing #4...)

BTW, I've started creating some archives, adjusting all-time legends' (and modern stars') stats into a unique league. The outcome should be interesting.

[YoungRich]

A lot of the things you posted make zero sense. First of all, come the playoffs, Wilt averaged 35 ppg that season, not 22. 22.5 is his career average, so the 22 number is a wrong generalization. Second, Wilt never in his career was "nowhere near the best player on his team", except if we're talking only about scoring, which he reduced to his own will. There were times when people would say that a 20 ppg Wilt could score no more, then he'd go in the next game and drop 60.
You mentioned Kobe? Kobe was a non factor in lots of crucial playoff games, with the Lakers getting blown out in some of them. Check the last game in 2003 vs San Antonio, 2004 vs Detroit, 2006 vs Phoenix, 2007 vs Phoenix, 2008 vs Boston. At least, even when Wilt lost series:

1) His team didn't get blown out nearly as often.
2) During crucial games he didn't have that many underperformances.
3) Even when he didn't score as much as he was expected to, he still did a lot of other things. For example, Wilt only twice grabbed less than 20 rebounds in the last game of any playoff series he played, won or lost.
4) Wilt, apart from one case, always lost to the eventual champions (and usually to the team with the best defense in the league). Phoenix, for Kobe's case, never had anything resembling the best defense in the league.

And what does James White have to do with Wilt? Wilt has plenty of basketball talent and proved so. White, except from dunking, proved nothing.



There's more to it than just adjusting for pace, when it comes to faster vs slower eras:

1) Faster paced eras generally favor non-star players, since there are generally less passes and there's a better chance that the player who has the ball will shoot. This hurts centers the most, although Wilt was the fastest center in the league.

2) As a consequence of this, a slower paced league, will most often have a higher scoring efficiency. Players with low scoring talent would shoot less, ill-adviced shots would be less, etc. Now, I did notice that you scaled his percentages up, but in this case, overall scoring will go up, as well. I don't know if you did this, but you certainly didn't do so when adjusting 24.8 fga to Shaq's ones.

3) The per minute efficiency of someone resting for 8 minutes per game can't be the same with the per minute efficiency of someone not resting at all in the same way that if a player can produce 20 ppg in 30 minutes, it's not exactly fair to claim that if he played 40 he would produce 26.7. If he could play 40 minutes and retain the same efficiency, he would do so.

4) There's another reason pace has gone down considerably. It's not just the need for higher efficiency. Tougher defenses play a role to this, as well. When you adjust 60's pace to 00's pace, this means that you also adjust 60's to 00's defenses, therefore it's not really fair to scale down the numbers even more (from 33 ppg to 29.5 in our case), because the adjustment already means that all the 60's centers of our adjusted league actually grow up in today's era and play similarly to today's players. In other words, there's no reason to adjust the pace of a 60's league to a pace of a 00's league and assume that 60's players still play like they used to. Having said that, I'd easily rank the "modern equivalent" of the average center of Wilt's NBA over the average center of today and would actually scale the final stats up.

5) Even after adjusting, the 3 bpg estimation is low. A player like Ewing blocked more than 3 shots per game in his prime during even slower eras.

(There's a 6th point I'd like to add, but forgot it while writing #4...)

BTW, I've started creating some archives, adjusting all-time legends' (and modern stars') stats into a unique league. The outcome should be interesting.

keep me posted

[postmupndunkit]

"THE NEW 2009" Wilt would have access to trainers, state of the art exercise equipment, and dietary supplements. In addition to all the technology and human specialists available now that weren't avail back them.

He'd band with the best of them and his body type would be different. Wilt would average 50/25/10 in 2009

[Mdog1]

"THE NEW 2009" Wilt would have access to trainers, state of the art exercise equipment, and dietary supplements. In addition to all the technology and human specialists available now that weren't avail back them.

He'd band with the best of them and his body type would be different. Wilt would average 50/25/10 in 2009

No that is not true because the pace back then has changed to now so he would not be getting 50 PPG and to say so is retarded.

[VCMVP1551]

1) Faster paced eras generally favor non-star players, since there are generally less passes and there's a better chance that the player who has the ball will shoot. This hurts centers the most, although Wilt was the fastest center in the league.

Yeah, but regardless there's no doubt his FGA would drop a lot. Especially with scouting what it is today. It's hard to imagine Wilt getting much more than 21-22 FGA on a good team(which the 1962 Warriors were). It's harder to get a lot of FGA when you're playing with your back to basket. Wilt's game from everything I saw was mostly with his back to the basket. Even high scoring centers who played facing the basket more and took a lot of jumpshots like Ewing and Robinson never got to 21 FGA per game. Olajuwon did twice, but then again Hakeem was on a team with no stars most of that time and he also played facing the basket more than Wilt as far as I can tell.

2) As a consequence of this, a slower paced league, will most often have a higher scoring efficiency. Players with low scoring talent would shoot less, ill-adviced shots would be less, etc. Now, I did notice that you scaled his percentages up, but in this case, overall scoring will go up, as well. I don't know if you did this, but you certainly didn't do so when adjusting 24.8 fga to Shaq's ones.

In my final estimate I gave Wilt 29.5 ppg up from the 28.1 when adjusted to Shaq's FGA and I gave him 56 FG% up from the 53.3% he initially got when his numbers were adjusted. That wasn't based on any particular math. I just knew that Wilt's FG% would jump up even higher and as a result his ppg would. 56 FG% on 21.1 FGA and 61.3% on 9.1 FTA would give him 29.2 ppg. I gave him the same FGA to FTA ratio as he had in 1962.

3) The per minute efficiency of someone resting for 8 minutes per game can't be the same with the per minute efficiency of someone not resting at all in the same way that if a player can produce 20 ppg in 30 minutes, it's not exactly fair to claim that if he played 40 he would produce 26.7. If he could play 40 minutes and retain the same efficiency, he would do so.

That's fair, but while Wilt would be getting the extra rest other players would get in a rythym at times and it's not like they'd just stop shooting the instant Wilt came in. Plus the players today are atleast a bit bigger and more athletic so that would tire him out as well. In 48 minutes you can also keep shooting even when you're cold and even Wilt would go through cold stretchs because his game wasn't just 5 feet around the basket. In 40 minutes he wouldn't always have the luxary to shoot himself out of those cold stretches. So I think there are a lot of points either way.

4) There's another reason pace has gone down considerably. It's not just the need for higher efficiency. Tougher defenses play a role to this, as well. When you adjust 60's pace to 00's pace, this means that you also adjust 60's to 00's defenses, therefore it's not really fair to scale down the numbers even more (from 33 ppg to 29.5 in our case), because the adjustment already means that all the 60's centers of our adjusted league actually grow up in today's era and play similarly to today's players. In other words, there's no reason to adjust the pace of a 60's league to a pace of a 00's league and assume that 60's players still play like they used to. Having said that, I'd easily rank the "modern equivalent" of the average center of Wilt's NBA over the average center of today and would actually scale the final stats up.

I scaled down the numbers even more because I didn't think Wilt would get 25 FGA in today's game. If he did then I believe he could have approached 33 ppg, but I don't see any center coming near that. Olajuwon, Ewing and Robinson weren't anywhere near that and they faced the basket a lot.

5) Even after adjusting, the 3 bpg estimation is low. A player like Ewing blocked more than 3 shots per game in his prime during even slower eras.

I meant in a season when Wilt was already scoring 29-30 ppg and grabbing 14 rpg. I gave Wilt in the late 60's 4 blocks, 15.5 rebounds and 5 assists per game because he focused on that more. Maybe he'd be around 4 bpgs in his best seasons too, that I do not know because blocked shots stats weren't kept.

BTW, I've started creating some archives, adjusting all-time legends' (and modern stars') stats into a unique league. The outcome should be interesting.

That should be interesting, I've always been interested in that myself.

[YoungRich]

i can talk about wilt all day. can any find the possesions per game for the 72-73 lakers? dude still racked up 18.6 rpg, and 22.5 in the playoffs wowza

[YoungRich]

i assume the pace slowed down at least a lil in the playoffs back then too, can any oldies confirm this

[gts]

i can talk about wilt all day. can any find the possesions per game for the 72-73 lakers? dude still racked up 18.6 rpg, and 22.5 in the playoffs wowza

pace wasnt kept back then and it's hard to figure out because they didn't keep track of offensive rebounds (a key factor in determing posessions/pace)

[YoungRich]

pace wasnt kept back then and it's hard to figure out because they didn't keep track of offensive rebounds (a key factor in determing posessions/pace)

i meant pos/game