WHO IS THE GREATEST BASKETBALL PLAYER OF ALL TIME?

By Zachary Blakeslee

October 4, 2018-Greenville New York Argument/Opinion.

Is LeBron James the best? Maybe Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant? This debate has been popular for anybody that avidly follows the NBA and most people have a strong opinion on the subject. People favor a player because of their childhood watching them play or because they have seen stats and highlights of players before their time. In my honest opinion, LeBron and Kobe are overrated. That’s a very unpopular opinion because most people who comment on who the best is have watched Kobe and Jordan growing up. But basing this article on as many statistics as possible I’m going to make the unpopular argument that Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest player of all time.

ERA?

The main argument against Wilt Chamberlain being the greatest of all time is the amount of competition. In the 1960s when Wilt played, he played against not as athletic people during an early period of the NBA. People were smaller and the case is made that nowadays in the NBA Wilt would not have been as dominant of a player because of how much stronger the competition is now. Although this is ridiculous. It is true that Wilt Chamberlain was taller than all of his competition but because of this huge advantage, the refs would allow the defenders to do anything they can to obstruct Wilt from scoring including fouling him. Defenders could hit him, knock into him and also grab ahold of him in an attempt to stop him from jumping to the rim. (Even though as I’m going to explain in a moment it was not very effective).

ATHLETICISM?

Wilt was undoubtedly the most athletic NBA player to play in NBA history. He was fast for his size, he was even a sprinter in college. He was freakishly tall, with a giant wingspan. He had an amazing vertical, and he was by far the strongest NBA player in history despite his skinny but tall body type. Wilt was 7 foot 1 and 275 pounds and he had a standing reach of 9 feet. in his prime, he could bench press 500 pounds. In second place for that record was Shaq and in his prime, he couldn’t even bench more than Wilt could when he was in his 50s just 5-10 years before he died of heart failure. This giant man also ran a sub 11 100 yard dash and was able to dunk on a 13-foot hoop with his 48 inch vertical. This proves that even though he might not have had the best competition in the 60s he could still play. And play great now in the NBA. Wilt Chamberlain also still holds the record for highest vertical of all time out of NBA players.

STORIES ABOUT WILT CHAMBERLAIN

Since Wilt Chamberlain played in the 60s when the NBA was not as popular, games were not always filmed so some of the things that I’m going to say have either been told by somebody present during the time or by multiple people who saw it and were amazed by this Goliath. First of all, when Wilt was young and throughout his life, he was good friends with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold has stated that when Wilt Chamberlain would work out with him and other bodybuilders he would out lift the strongest guys there including himself. Wilt Chamberlain also is known to pick up grown men and carry, and even throw them around with ease. In this next story, Wilt showed everybody just how strong he actually was. In a game when Wilt was about to dunk on a defender who was smaller around 200 pounds grabbed ahold of Wilts' shoulders in desperation to keep him from jumping and dunking, but this just annoyed Wilt. He jumped with the defender hanging off of him and dunked it. He had the vertical and the strength to jump and dunk with a 200 pound defender hanging off of his shoulders. I cannot think of any case in the history of SPORTS where a player has shown that kind of physical dominance.

Wilt Chamberlain also holds quite the amount of NBA records including the most points in a single game with 100 points and the only big man in the NBA to be the assist leader (passes to teammates where your teammate scores). He also has two championships and 4 MVP awards.

Wilt also is known to have a slight temper. One time an opponent named Gus Johnson decided to dunk on Wilt and actually succeeded. This in itself was quite lucky because of Wilts height and vertical. And this wasn’t some trash player. Gus, looking back has been compared to the LeBron of that era. But when he got the ball again and he had a 1v1 option against Wilt he wanted to get another dunk on him which was the guys first mistake since Wilt who wasn’t used to being dunked on, was furious about being dunked on and jumped up and caught the basketball one-handed while Gus was dunking it and was strong enough to stop the ball dead. But unfortunately for Gus he kept going and Wilt threw the ball mid-air with Gus still attached to it and dislocated his shoulder when he hit the ground. Gus, unable to get off the court himself, needed to be carried off on a stretcher. o this day the only time somebody dislocated a shoulder on a clean block with no foul.

RULE CHANGES

One of my major problems with sports is that the more popular athletes get rules changed to help them put on a better show and put up more points. Since Wilt played before basketball was popular he didn’t have the number of fans Jordan had and didn’t bring in the same amount of money for the NBA like Jordan did. As you know the NBA is a business and needs money. So when Jordan started getting money for the NBA the league made rules to make it easier for offenses to score. This made it easier for Jordan to put up mad numbers and it also helped players later on like Kobe and Shaq. With the rules changed games were higher scoring because it made defense significantly harder. Wilt, on the other hand, did not have that much of a fan base and he was so dominant that they had to make rules to stop future players from destroying the competition like Wilt did. They added the goaltending rule specifically because of the amount of blocks wilt was getting it was hard for the opponents to score.

CONSISTENCY.

This is a category that in my opinion was the most impressive. Wilt Chamberlain was fouled a lot by defenders and he also was so dominant that when Wilt was on defense he would get called for fouls that everybody else wouldn’t get called for because Wilt’s opponent needed an actual chance to score. Even with all of this the man still averaged 45 minutes per game. More minutes than there is in a game. He played every minute of every game and overtime. And he played at this high of a level for his entire career. This is unheard of in sports for a player to play every minute of every game. That takes good physical and mental shape to accomplish which is why this stat is probably Wilt’s most impressive.

WHY WILT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED THE GOAT.

When Wilt Chamberlain stepped on the court you knew that you were going to see a man who could score at will. In one season he averaged 50 points a game. He was a dominating force on the court and off, as he was also known for his volleyball career. Although some of the greatest people die young such as Wilt (the stilt) Chamberlain did he will always be remembered as a great player and definitely at least a top 5 player of all time, but as I pointed out. I feel he should be number 1.