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Is anyone ever going to beat his 100 points in a game record? He set it in 1962. I get that defense has gotten so much better since then, but Kobe came close with 81.
Was Wilt Chamberlain the GOAT of basketball?
- Thread starter chardog
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I buy the 500lbs bench only because they say Shaq benched 450, but I don't even know if that number is legit.
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Except they didn't say 500lbs, they said 600lbs, so you have no reason to "buy" 500lbs. Furthermore, no, I don't believe that is accurate for Shaq, I seem to recall reading he said his PR was 425 or 430, but Shaq also weighed somewhere in the range of 390 when he was at his heaviest, and he was still in prime form between the weights of 330-360. Wilt was 275.
Shaq is also one of the most athletic big men in history. He had a max vertical of 38" when he came into the league at 293. Note that the highest recorded max vertical in the history of the NBA Combine going back two decades is still just 45.0", and that's from a guy who didn't end up in the league. The recent dunk contest champion Hamidou Diallo has the highest of any guy who actually gets playing time at 44.5", and he's 6'3". BTW, that's another myth surrounding Wilt: that he could touch the top of the backboard. Nope.
People mistakenly think Shaq is fat because he carries the core of a strongman:
Trust me: Wilt wouldn't bench as much as Shaq.
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Dwight Howard went from a 185 bench at the combine to repping 365, without even arching his lumbar. Wilt had a similar build, and is particularly noted for his strength, even relative to his size. It’s very conceivable that he could bench 500.
As far as the claims of his jumping and running ability...well, they are likely exaggerated. Having said that, I doubt they are exaggerated by much. The guy was quite simply an A++ level athlete. If he had been born 50 years later, he would easily be the best big in the league.
As far as the claims of his jumping and running ability...well, they are likely exaggerated. Having said that, I doubt they are exaggerated by much. The guy was quite simply an A++ level athlete. If he had been born 50 years later, he would easily be the best big in the league.
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Wilt is overrated and has inflated numbers due to the inferior league he was in. He was called the most physically dominant because he was in a league where most guys were not exercising like fiends like they do today.
Also he's like one of the few black guys in a mostly all white league. His competition was no one near it is today or especially in the 90's. I doubt he'd get a 50 point game in today's league.
It's similar to Jack Nicklaus. He wasn't playing with heavy competition compared to Tiger Woods. If Woods played in Nicklaus era, he would have broken every record named.
Also he's like one of the few black guys in a mostly all white league. His competition was no one near it is today or especially in the 90's. I doubt he'd get a 50 point game in today's league.
It's similar to Jack Nicklaus. He wasn't playing with heavy competition compared to Tiger Woods. If Woods played in Nicklaus era, he would have broken every record named.
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I have no doubt that Wilt was stronger than Shaq. We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. & I heard (or read) Arnold saying Wilt had a 500lb bench. Wilt himself said his playing weight was 300-310 (I can post the vid if you like). Shaq is not in Wilt's league as an athlete imo.
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Except this isn't true. There were plenty of 6'10-7'+ black dudes playing in Wilt's day like Nate Thurmond, Walt Bellamy, Willis Reed, Kareem, etc. What do you think 7' black dudes did back then? You think they didn't know about basketball?
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Yes I'm sure they were a few black players, but nothing compared to what it is today or 90's. Just answer me this question. Was it mostly white players during Wilt Chamberlain era? Yes or no?
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I'm honestly not sure about this. I'll try to research that. By the 60s black players had a large presence in the league. Many of the best players were black.
With the way the league is focused on 3s I could see a couple of guys getting hot and getting close. Harden,Curry,Klay would be top of the list but you'd need a perfect storm of events.They'd have to red hot in a close game that probably goes to OT. Look at some of Hardens stat lines where he goes for 55 and still misses 10 3s
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Wilt's peak was around 300, but Shaq's peak was 390. Wilt's rookie weight was 250 to Shaq's 293. That ~250 is what he was weighing when he made his marks in track in college (that all aren't nearly as good as what people bandy about him).
I detect in your a desire to believe Wilt was superhuman, and more than he was. Don't fall prey to this. Shaq wasn't as fast, but he was just as explosive, and he was so while being bigger/stronger. Love Arnold, but I am uncertain he said that, and even if he did, I'm not interested in anecdotal legends from bodybuilders. Not buying. Those guys can't even tell the truth about their heights within 4" of the reality. Besides, the 500lb whopper gets reprinted by irredeemable morons. Example:
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/438984-wilt-chamberlain-did-he-really-play-in-weak-era
This dumbass "Richard JT" believes Wilt had a 55" vertical leap. This is why people mock journalists. They're just not smart people.
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Wilt played north of 300 in his Laker days. I love Shaq, but he was fat for most of his career. He should never have got that big.
& no, not superhuman, but a different caliber athlete than Shaq. & Shaq is like my favorite celeb ever. Wilt was taller & stronger than Shaq. I don't think the folklore is based on lies. There are people who witnessed both that will tell you that Wilt's strength was on a different level.
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He's about 360, apparently, in the video I posted above, and this is old Shaq. No, he wasn't fat at that weight. He was fat when he ballooned up to nearly 400 lbs, and the Lakers were lying on his listing, but announcers like Walton would relay anecdotes about talking to the LA trainers who would mock that listed weight, and said he was closer to 400: in the 390ish range.
You underestimate Shaq's athleticism because you've been listening to these fish stories about Wilt all these years, and it has colored your perception of the truth. It was all lies, man.
Embrace skepticism. It will set you free.
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Concretely, he was listed at 360 at his heaviest, IIRC, but again, the announcers used to roundly mock that figure, and would talk about it during broadcasts when he played, with everyone relaying inside information, or speculating based on past listed weights while offering eyeball comparison of before/after pics. Concretely, Wilt was never listed above 300. He was listed at 275 even by the Lakers on their roster.
So either you accept this, or you acknowledge once agains that Wilt was never above 275.
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possibly a bit padded, I did find video of him doing a 6'6" high jump AT ONE competition, not personal best.
arnold was on video talking about wilt's ability to tricep extension 150-170lbs.
from wikipedia: As he did at Overbrook, Chamberlain again showcased his diverse athletic talent. He ran the 100-yard dash in 10.9 seconds, shot-putted 56 feet, triple jumped more than 50 feet, and won the high jump in the Big Eight track and field championships three straight years.[29]
the guy is ridiculously talented in his prime, and nobody comes close, especially 7' tall athletes.
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like Kareem?
that's a 35 year old wilt right there, about to retire, taking on 25 year old Kareem
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Yeah, I just talked about the Wiki and how wildly inaccurate it is. That footnote makes no mention of these alleged feats, and certainly provides no hard references to any. It's a blog site.
https://archive.ph/20130111005833/http://www.hickoksports.com/biograph/chamberl.shtml
Look up his Big Eight recorded performances that you can find. It's all bullshit. He did win the high jump in the Big 8, and 6'7" was his PR. His first win of those three was actually the final Big 7 championship, and his championship performance was 6'5".
Otherwise, he didn't do any of that except the shot put, but that figure is not that insanely impressive. That shot put figure, for example, is on par with the strongest throwers among elite decathletes, for example, who tend to weigh around 170-200 pounds, and who have far shorter arms with which to generate force/speed to propel the put.
Here's an old post I made on the topic. Unfortunately it's not the post, that got lost in the changeover, but it's sobering. You see his triple jump of over 50-feet claimed in the jpeg below, but that was the only one I couldn't confirm when I did my deep dive. There was no record of it:
https://forums.sherdog.com/posts/114821987/
His 10.9 in the 100m dash is actually a conversion (10.94) of his PR in the yard-race, but that's gifting him a 10.0 flat, since they didn't record beyond the tenth decimal, and it was hand-timed, which means you have to add ~.15 to that figure. In other words, his 100m time if properly timed today would be 11.0-11.1 depending on how the watch time was rounded. Quite impressive, but people immediately take the lowest possible figure, and don't account for what's true.Yes, I know how to Google. I've been here before with jrams.
There's no eyewitnesses. It's bullshit. Remember this is from the biggest bullshitting "sport" that ever existed (bodybuilding) where exaggerating competitor height by as much as 4"-5" is routine.
Shaq benching 450 is infinitely more believable than Wilt benching 500. Shaq weighed up to 370 at times, had a shorter wingspan, and wider shoulders for a better leverage coefficient.
Here is an example of credible figures; they are elite, but not inhuman. For example, those track times are his PR's from college in yards (100m= 10.94 converted...very fast but not mindblowing). Yet when I started looking through microforms and other old hard sources (such as results sheets from actual college track meets) I couldn't substantiate his triple jump figure, here, IIRC.
Did you notice something about all these "sources", Reroute? They're not actually sources. They don't actually source specific dates and track meet times. They don't substantiate these figures with citation of official and formally recognized, sanctioned events. They don't point to result sheets and officially maintained records. Once somebody went sniffing around his old high school region, and there was an amateur enthusiast who maintained all the age group records. He said he couldn't corroborate many claims about Wilt's records when he was asked to source them.
The more underwhelming stuff holds up.
He was an incredible leaper given his height and weight, and his all-around athleticism is among the greatest of all time, but it's also among the most recklessly embellished.
Keep in mind all of the below were performed when he was at or below his 250-pound rookie bodyweight:
High Jump = 6'7"
Long Jump = 22'
Triple Jump = unconfirmed
Shot Put = 56'
100m = 11.0-11.1 (conversion)
200m = 20.9 (conversion)
400m = 48.7 (conversion)
Bench Press = ??? (never demonstrated publicly or performed in a meet, ever)
Great runner/jumper at his size, but not outside the realm of what bigs have done since. Here's Dwight Howard on the TV show Shaq vs. besting retired 100m world record holder Maurice Greene in a 60m dash leadoff relay leg:
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No. It's Oscar Robertson!
Throw all the fucking present bias shit aside(idiots saying players were bad when they clearly weren't and ignoring how deep rosters were in a 8 team league) and just look at the differences in the game that helped Wilt. The smaller average height and there being no three point line put centers at an advantage over players who shot the ball because there was just less shooters could do to impact the game and less they could do to stop centers from getting points and rebounds. Wilt's scoring stats were inflated to an extent same way a lot of shooters stats like Oscar and others were deflated.
Then again when you average 40 to 50 in a season who really cares if it's inflated,you're outscoring everyone else by at times well over 10 points? What would be a proper representation of that today? Doesn't matter still incredible and Wilt did start focusing on getting his teammates the ball later in his career and put up good assist numbers, something not too many other great centers(in any era) really did.
And if Wilt's overrated and Bill Russell's great people got to start asking why Russell was inferior in(nearly I'm sure someone will be able to dig up some exceptions) every statistical category except rings. NBA's a team game.
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not sure what the point of the shaq video, but he had a good lead and lost, little guy was gaining on him fast from the behind. dwight isnt in the same class as wilt, 4" shorter, 5" shorter wingspan.
keep in mind, his high jump was with the old school wrong way style. According to wikipedia, the USSR record for non flop method was 7'1", so 6'7 is extremely impressive for a guy that did not specialize in that field. Clearly the guy is one of the best jumpers in the league, you cant clumsily jump that high.
many of his records were from a book http://www.garympomerantz.com/books/wilt-1962
so I'm not about to quote from a book, but that's how it was done in the past.
so I'll leave the strength stuff as it is. they are witness accounts, and there are a ton of them.
when it comes to BB, wilt played with a great Kareem, and at the end of his career, wilt still held his own and captured the rebound title with staggering numbers. After leaving, Kareem would get one title for rebounds, so he wasnt playing with bums as implied by many. Kareem is top 10 center of all time.
Wilt also lead the league in assists for a year, I dont recall if a center has ever achieved that before, clearly the guy was gifted.
the infamous wilt vs magic johnson story
magic johnson acknowledging wilt
