If you are a basketball fan, chances are you have either believed at one time or still believe that Wilt Chamberlain is on the Mount Rushmore of professional basketball. Part of the reason you believe this is because he did things like score 100 points in an NBA game, and average 50 points over an entire season. These feats are pretty spectacular. The other part of the reason you believe this is because people who don’t understand how much competition level matters told you it’s true. So, it must be, right? Well, I’ll let you decide, but for all his exploits on the court, Chamberlain was a relatively mediocre playoff performer (largest decline in career scoring average from regular season to playoffs in history), had at least a three inch height advantage over 92% of the league, and shot just 54% from the field during his career, including only 52% in the playoffs, despite playing against, by far, the weakest competition in NBA history. In fact, it wasn’t until he cut his field goal attempts nearly in half that his teams started to have success in the playoffs. Yes, all of those record breaking offensive achievements likely prevented his teams from playoff success. There are several players in NBA history who would have had little problem matching Chamberlain’s scoring prowess had they been given 40 shots per game, and they would’ve done so with a much higher shooting percentage. This isn’t a Wilt thing, it’s an era thing. Chamberlain was the greatest player of a really flawed era. 

Let’s get right into the ugly underbelly of Chamberlain’s historical significance. We cannot begin any conversation about Chamberlain’s status on the all-time list without loudly and emphatically stating that he did his cooking on “easy mode.” He was not only the tallest player in the NBA, he was at least three inches taller than 92% of the league, and at least six inches taller than 78% of the league. Height is a physical trait, not a skill. Yet, 21 of the first 25 NBA MVPs played center. That says quite a bit about what was important in the NBA in the 1960s. As the league became more skilled, being tall stopped mattering as much. Starting with Larry Bird’s MVP in the 1983-84 NBA season, 34 of the next 37 NBA MVPs were not centers. Magic and Bird ushered in the era of skill, and the league has not looked back. Chamberlain was tall and athletic, and that was largely it. NBA competition was so watered down in the 60s that being tall and athletic was the only prerequisite to dominating the league. It is not hyperbole to suggest that DeAndre Jordan would have been a monster in the 1960s.  Footwork, skill, handles, shooting were merely a gleam in the eye. Chamberlain lived within 10 feet of the basket because he had to. He shot just 51% from the free throw line despite having nearly 12,000 attempts to figure it out. That’s worse than Shaq! 

Now, about that 100 point-game and 50-point scoring average.  On March 2, 1962, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in an NBA game against the New York Knicks. He also had 63 field goal attempts and 32 free throw attempts, which means he took roughly 80 shots from the field if we include attempts he was fouled on. Nobody has ever come close to taking that many shots in a single NBA game. In fact, Chamberlain missed 27 shots. Michael Jordan and LeBron James never averaged 27 shot attempts in their entire career. For perspective, David Robinson entered the final game of the 1993-94 regular season in a razor-close battle with Shaquille O’Neal for the league scoring title. Robinson dropped 71 points by being force-fed the ball by his teammates, just like Chamberlain’s teammates did in 1962. In a significantly more competitive NBA landscape, Robinson was much more efficient in his 71-point game than Chamberlain was in his 100-point game, beating him not just in field goal percentage (63.4% to 57.1%), but also in True Shooting % (68.3% to 64.9%). Robinson also scored 63% of San Antonio’s points compared to Chamberlain scoring 60% of Philadelphia’s. The reason teams don’t allow players to shoot 80 times a game is because it’s inefficient against good defenses. Chamberlain’s playoff success, or lack thereof, proves this. Robinson’s 71-point game showed that other players were capable of doing what Chamberlain did, and capable of doing it more efficiently. 

Chamberlain took a lot of shots, and he missed a lot of shots. This is best exemplified by the 1961-62 season in which he averaged an NBA single-season record 50.4 points per game. While he chucked shots in 1962 like nobody before or since, he missed a remarkable 1,562 shots, which is, by far, the highest total in NBA history. Nobody else has even missed 1,300 shots in a season. Chamberlain’s field goal percentage during his record-setting season was just 50.6%, despite shooting solely from within 10 feet of the basket and playing against players who were several inches shorter than he was. That percentage would be borderline unplayable for a high-volume center in today’s NBA.

In the early days of the NBA, the league was regional and the money was not lucrative. This resulted in a small talent pool to draw from. To water the league down even more, unofficial racial quotas made the league largely inaccessible to black athletes. Only 25% of the NBA was black in 1962. That number has been steadily above 70% since the late 70s. Chamberlain feasted on this compromised league and, even then, his numbers plummeted when it mattered most. Consider his career regular season scoring average was 30.1 points, but his playoff scoring average fell to just 22.5 points. While the league overall was competitively weak, there were good teams, with legitimate defenses. These teams gave Chamberlain fits. Modern basketball players prove everyday that there’s more to basketball than size and athleticism. That was even true in Chamberlain’s era, even if there were only one or two teams that could prove it. 

Wilt Chamberlain was the greatest basketball player of all-time at one time. He was the king of his era, but his era was a small pond compared to the lakes and oceans that have existed since. It’s OK to acknowledge how much better Chamberlain was than the very homogenized collection of athletes that existed in the league’s infancy. It’s also OK to rate him higher than any player from his era. In fact it would be illogical not to. However, it is disrespectful to the game of basketball to ignore how little skill was involved in professional basketball in the 1960s. It’s also disrespectful to the stars who have thrived in a drastically more competitive NBA environment in the six decades since.