by spitfire » Thu Mar 15, 2018 1:00 am
I think Gary is talking about the quality of competition your 8'1"C is facing, not the quality of his teammates. His point is that if Wilt were facing players like Shaq or Hakeem he wouldn't have averaged 27 RPG. It's an interesting point of discussion. Wilt WAS facing players like Russell, Baylor and Pettit in 60/61. Russell averaged 23.9 himself that season, which ain't chickenfeed. Looking at the two head-to-head, Wilt out-rebounded Russell in 9 of their 13 head-to-head match-ups in 60/61, including a 55 to 19 rebounding blowout (Boston won that game, by the way ......). I think one could say that Wilt faced some pretty good competition himself back when he was putting up those monster numbers.