Quote:
Originally Posted by feel wrath
Wilt is probably the closest in American sport, if his scoring and rebounding dominance had continued through his entire career
The truth is that Wilt is actually kind of overrated, and might not be the best player of his era (Russell). It goes beyond simple ring counting. The reason Wilt's statistical dominance is overrated is based on deeper statistical analysis which shows that his massive scoring didn't correlate with winning.
Basketball is a team game and it doesn't matter who does the scoring. Wilt, early in his career, took a massive amount of shots, to the detriment of his team's overall offensive efficiency. His teams were statistically not that impressive. Later in his career, he was coached to take fewer shots, and that's when he had far more team success because by drastically lowering his shot attempts he improved his efficiency (by cutting out his more difficult attempts) and set up his team for more easy baskets, leading to increased offensive efficiency for the team.
Wilt was a dominant rebounder but all rebounding statistics from his era are massively inflated due to league-wide high pace and low field goal percentage. Every team in the 60's ran up and down the court and took (and missed) a lot of shots. Dennis Rodman is actually the greatest rebounder of all-time, and it's not close.
Bill Russell on the other hand, was the defensive anchor of a Celtics dynasty that held opponents to several points per game below their average, every single season. Before the 3-point era, center defense was the single most important thing in the game, as every attack focused on trying to score as close to the basket as possible.
TLDR but Russell > Wilt.