75 Best Players in the History of the NBA: Dame?

Wilt averaged 24 points, 24 rebounds and 9 assists when he was 31

he led the league in rebounding for three straight seasons when he was 34-36. And that was at a time when other C's in the league included Kareem, Nate Thurmond, Dave Cowens, Bob Lanier, Wes Unseld, Elvin Hayes, and Walt Bellamy

the NBA has evolved because of NBA rule changes

 

Lillard is too small..he'd only fill up 60% of that logo box. That's a lot of white space.

And yes, I can already anticipate the counterpunch: Jerry West is a lot of white space.

 

I think since there are only 36 players to have won the MVP in league history, it would be crazy to leave any of them off of the list. So I bet Walton makes it.

 

He flat out said he’d be the best player in the game today. Thats what he meant by dominate. SIGH….

 

I think a better way to look at it is what would today’s players do back then. Tell me what Dame would average in 1959…….what would The Greek Freak do to the 6’1” 185 lb SF trying to guard him.

 

i think THAT puts in perspective the talent level back then.

 

Some people felt Embiid was at least in the argument for best player. He was a top MVP candidate. I don't think Chamberlain would clearly be the best player in the NBA today, but in the argument? Sure, I think that's possible.

 

Like I said though…..what about todays players going back and playing against all those accountants and librarians they called players. Anger needs Simmons would average 45 against those dudes.

 

They'd probably do things like score 100 points in a game, average more points than minutes played, have 40-20 seasons and the like.

Again, I'm not saying that all the players from the 1960s would do fine today. I was explicitly not saying that. Most of the league in the 1960s wouldn't come anywhere close to NBA-quality today. But Chamberlain wasn't just a 6'7'' player scoring 21 points per game and getting a nice 9 boards per game. He had height, weight, athleticism and strength equivalent to the best of today. He was, in pretty much every way, a modern-style athlete playing against those "accountants and librarians" as you put it. What would a modern great player do against them? Look at Chamberlain's stats to find out.

 

Never questioned Wilt’s skills, it’s always been about the competition he played against is all. Reminds me of back in high school. Had a good friend of mine from our church growing up, who is my age and went to Brush Prairie high school up in deep Vancouver. Dude was like first team all conference and every sport. But he always used to brag about basketball. So I finally told him he needed to stay the night with me and he could hang out and play basketball with me and my friends over the weekend. I don’t think he realized that the friends I was playing basketball with included Damon Stoudemire in Terrell Brandon, and a bunch other players that all went D1 that I grew up with and played with everyday. It was hilarious, his job was dropped is he watched everybody dunking just warming up. He was so freaked out, probably didn’t score a point all day couldn’t even hold my jockstrap, and I couldn’t even make our high school team we were so good. So I always look at the competition of who guys are playing with before I judge him. Because you can put up huge numbers if you’re playing against a bunch of scrubs. Not saying that’s the case with wilt, but he would definitely be playing against better players now than back then, and that’s not even a question.

 

Yeah, of course that's true. But we (and many experts) believe that Arvydas Sabonis was a truly great big man in his prime and he was playing much worse competition than the NBA. You have to account for the worse competition, so it's a level of projection. I don't think many of the Hall of Famers from the 1950s and 1960s could play today because they just don't have the bodies and athletic traits for it--Wilt did, in addition to being skilled. That's what makes me relatively comfortable projecting him forward.

 

This is well done, but Dame nowhere in sight.



And funny that the only Michael Jordan you saw was the one driving the bus.

 

And many of the rule changes were made because Wilt was so dominant.

 

The average height of an NBA player in 1959 was 1 inch less than now. Height and weight in the NBA is dropping - working back to optimal 1959 levels.

 

If most current NBA were transported back to 1959, they'd be called the N-word a bunch of times, they wouldn't take it well. They'd then be beaten and thrown in jail. So, not even available to play on the court...

 

WHOA


Unexpected, but very happy to see this.

 

Seems like a no brainer to me.