Better Accomplishment: Wilt Chamberlain's 2 or Larry Bird's 3?

[Hitman88]

Better Accomplishment: Wilt Chamberlain's 2 or Larry Bird's 3?

In terms of MVP, Wilt has the lead 4-3

[One_and_Done]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

[Wingy]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

Bird was largely responsible for the league no longer being “garbage” so the game grew in popularity for future generations to reap the benefits. I’m sure same can be said for Wilt in his time compared to previous decades.

[One_and_Done]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

Bird was largely responsible for the league no longer being “garbage” so the game grew in popularity for future generations to reap the benefits. I’m sure same can be said for Wilt in his time compared to previous decades.

It's garbage compared to today's league.

[Wingy]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

Bird was largely responsible for the league no longer being “garbage” so the game grew in popularity for future generations to reap the benefits. I’m sure same can be said for Wilt in his time compared to previous decades.

It's garbage compared to today's league.

Yes, your point is easy to understand. You didn’t seem to get mine. There is no “today’s league” without the likes of Bird.

[One_and_Done]

Bird was largely responsible for the league no longer being “garbage” so the game grew in popularity for future generations to reap the benefits. I’m sure same can be said for Wilt in his time compared to previous decades.

It's garbage compared to today's league.

Yes, your point is easy to understand. You didn’t seem to get mine. There is no “today’s league” without the likes of Bird.

And there's no physics without some cavemen who built a cart. It doesn't mean those cavemen are comparable physicists to modern ones. You're not better at something because you were the first to do it, in fact that's almost never true.

[KembaWalker]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

Bird was largely responsible for the league no longer being “garbage” so the game grew in popularity for future generations to reap the benefits. I’m sure same can be said for Wilt in his time compared to previous decades.

It's garbage compared to today's league.

Todays league is garbage compared to 2050

[og15]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

This does nothing to answer the question. The question wasn't which player had more advanced basketball skills.

The overall strength of the league you play in doesn't inherently make it easier to win unless you are the dominant team. The difficulty in winning is based on the relative strength of your team compared to the best opponent you face. Wilt was not on the Celtics.

------

The Celtics were advantaged in a non reproducible way during the early era of the NBA that it isn't really rational to judge guys in the 60's based on championships the same way you might judge guys in different eras.

In general every evaluation of championship success requires us to look at era, player performance, strength of the players team and strength of opponents (of course hindsight has to be checked as best as possible when doing this too). Championships don't happen in a vacuum.

In the modern NBA, you can't even build and sustain the types of teams the early Celtics had since there was no salary cap until the mid 80's.

Then we have to take into account strategy during the onset of a sport at the professional level. When something is novel, everyone is in a sense guessing (hypothesizing), and we learn from data and trial and watching others and seeing what works and what doesn't or what is more effective vs less effective.

If you're an innovator in the early times of a sport, you will have a larger advantage than in later times, and in the late 50's and 60's you don't have thousands of people breaking down all this film so they can copy everything you do. Nowadays a high-school coach can watch, learn and implement professional coaching strategies using YouTube, not to talk of professional teams abilities to break things down.

So we have to understand what we are comparing when we are making the comparisons.

[Roger Murdock]

Wilts 2 are an indictment not an accomplishment. There were 8 teams and one other contender during much of his career.

Bird won titles in a league 3x the size and had to beat some extremely good teams to do so (Pistons, Lakers. 76ers

[art_tatum]

Those Celtics were stacked compared to other teams except the lakers.

The two chips wilt won, one of theirs was pretty stacked too. The other they beat Rick Barry and the warriors. The lakers win the league had 17 teams

[Frank Dux]

Bird 100%

[dhsilv2]

Wilts 2 are an indictment not an accomplishment. There were 8 teams and one other contender during much of his career.

Bird won titles in a league 3x the size and had to beat some extremely good teams to do so (Pistons, Lakers. 76ers

There were 8 teams for 2 of Wilt's seasons.

[Calvin Klein]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

Bird was largely responsible for the league no longer being “garbage” so the game grew in popularity for future generations to reap the benefits. I’m sure same can be said for Wilt in his time compared to previous decades.

It's garbage compared to today's league.

Whoever wins a couple of MVPs in 20 years will be better than Lebron's MVPs then.

[UcanUwill]

It's garbage compared to today's league.

Yes, your point is easy to understand. You didn’t seem to get mine. There is no “today’s league” without the likes of Bird.

And there's no physics without some cavemen who built a cart. It doesn't mean those cavemen are comparable physicists to modern ones. You're not better at something because you were the first to do it, in fact that's almost never true.

Beside you acting intentionally dismisive and ignorant, I am not sure I even agree with this point. Wheel is obvious thing to us, born into our world, but if doesn’t mean it didn’t take at least some kind of genius to actually figure that out. We probably all think that we would have thought of wheel, but humans lived in caves for like 50 000 years, and their brain capability was almost the same as ours, it was just not sharpenned, challenged and filled with knowledge that opens more potential to further discoveries. It took us thousands of years to think of wheel.

I bet Galileo was actually way way more genius than most astronomers today, despite him actually knowing very little of space, compared to what we know today.

[Quattro]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

Every time I stumble on one of your ignorant posts, I find myself wishing this forum had some sort of downvote button.

[OhMyGodBecky]

Wilt played with multiple future HOFers every season of his career. We gotta stop thinking he played alongside milkmen & plumbers. Bird's titles are impressive but what's more impressive is how he finished top 2 in MVP voting 7x for 8 straight years.

[FarBeyondDriven]

Bird played in the toughest era in NBA history with its best teams and players. His rings are way more impressive than Wilt's.

[NZB2323]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

This does nothing to answer the question. The question wasn't which player had more advanced basketball skills.

The overall strength of the league you play in doesn't inherently make it easier to win unless you are the dominant team. The difficulty in winning is based on the relative strength of your team compared to the best opponent you face. Wilt was not on the Celtics.

------

The Celtics were advantaged in a non reproducible way during the early era of the NBA that it isn't really rational to judge guys in the 60's based on championships the same way you might judge guys in different eras.

In general every evaluation of championship success requires us to look at era, player performance, strength of the players team and strength of opponents (of course hindsight has to be checked as best as possible when doing this too). Championships don't happen in a vacuum.

In the modern NBA, you can't even build and sustain the types of teams the early Celtics had since there was no salary cap until the mid 80's.

Then we have to take into account strategy during the onset of a sport at the professional level. When something is novel, everyone is in a sense guessing (hypothesizing), and we learn from data and trial and watching others and seeing what works and what doesn't or what is more effective vs less effective.

If you're an innovator in the early times of a sport, you will have a larger advantage than in later times, and in the late 50's and 60's you don't have thousands of people breaking down all this film so they can copy everything you do. Nowadays a high-school coach can watch, learn and implement professional coaching strategies using YouTube, not to talk of professional teams abilities to break things down.

So we have to understand what we are comparing when we are making the comparisons.

Wilt had Jerry West and Elgin Baylor as teammates in 1969 and Jerry West won finals MVP and Wilt still lost. Russell retired and Wilt still didn't win it all in 1970.

Some people wouldn't even say the best team of the 60s was the Celtics. The 1967 76ers won 68 games and had a Net Rtg of +7.7. In the playoffs they went 11-4. Wilt played with future hall of fame players Hal Greer, Chet "the Jet" Walker, and Billy Cunningham. You know who wasn't impressed with the 76ers beating the Cetlics? Wilt Chamberlain. All his teammates were celebrating in the locker room but Wilt wasn't because he knew his team was better than the Celtics and they should have beat them before. Why didn't they beat them before?

In 1966 Wilt lived in New York while playing for the 76ers because he liked the New York nightlife. Because of the commute, he refused to practice before noon. The coach didn't want to anger Chamberlain, so he held practice at 4 pm, which angered the other players. The owner tried to convince Wilt to move to Philly, but Wilt refused. In the playoffs against the Celtics, Wilt skipped practices before game 4 and game 5.

In 1968 the 76ers had the best record in the league and Wilt won MVP again and the 76ers had homecourt advantage and a 3-1 lead against the Celtics. The 1968 76ers became the first team to ever blow a 3-1 lead. In game 7 of the series, Wilt didn't attempt a shot in the 2nd half and blamed the coach for the lack of touches.

And the Celtics of the 1960s may have been stacked, but so were the 83 76ers and 87 Lakers who Bird had to go up against. Given how talented Wilt was and how many great players he played with, it's widely believed that he should have won more than 2 titles.

On the other hand, it’s widely believed that the Lakers were the better team in 1984, but the Celtics just outplayed them.

[og15]

Bird played in a league that was only garbage, not hot garbage, so him.

This does nothing to answer the question. The question wasn't which player had more advanced basketball skills.

The overall strength of the league you play in doesn't inherently make it easier to win unless you are the dominant team. The difficulty in winning is based on the relative strength of your team compared to the best opponent you face. Wilt was not on the Celtics.

------

The Celtics were advantaged in a non reproducible way during the early era of the NBA that it isn't really rational to judge guys in the 60's based on championships the same way you might judge guys in different eras.

In general every evaluation of championship success requires us to look at era, player performance, strength of the players team and strength of opponents (of course hindsight has to be checked as best as possible when doing this too). Championships don't happen in a vacuum.

In the modern NBA, you can't even build and sustain the types of teams the early Celtics had since there was no salary cap until the mid 80's.

Then we have to take into account strategy during the onset of a sport at the professional level. When something is novel, everyone is in a sense guessing (hypothesizing), and we learn from data and trial and watching others and seeing what works and what doesn't or what is more effective vs less effective.

If you're an innovator in the early times of a sport, you will have a larger advantage than in later times, and in the late 50's and 60's you don't have thousands of people breaking down all this film so they can copy everything you do. Nowadays a high-school coach can watch, learn and implement professional coaching strategies using YouTube, not to talk of professional teams abilities to break things down.

So we have to understand what we are comparing when we are making the comparisons.

Wilt had Jerry West and Elgin Baylor as teammates in 1969 and Jerry West won finals MVP and Wilt still lost. Russell retired and Wilt still didn't win it all in 1970.

Some people wouldn't even say the best team of the 60s was the Celtics. The 1967 76ers won 68 games and had a Net Rtg of +7.7. In the playoffs they went 11-4. Wilt played with future hall of fame players Hal Greer, Chet "the Jet" Walker, and Billy Cunningham. You know who wasn't impressed with the 76ers beating the Cetlics? Wilt Chamberlain. All his teammates were celebrating in the locker room but Wilt wasn't because he knew his team was better than the Celtics and they should have beat them before. Why didn't they beat them before?

In 1966 Wilt lived in New York while playing for the 76ers because he liked the New York nightlife. Because of the commute, he refused to practice before noon. The coach didn't want to anger Chamberlain, so he held practice at 4 pm, which angered the other players. The owner tried to convince Wilt to move to Philly, but Wilt refused. In the playoffs against the Celtics, Wilt skipped practices before game 4 and game 5.

In 1968 the 76ers had the best record in the league and Wilt won MVP again and the 76ers had homecourt advantage and a 3-1 lead against the Celtics. The 1968 76ers became the first team to ever blow a 3-1 lead. In game 7 of the series, Wilt didn't attempt a shot in the 2nd half and blamed the coach for the lack of touches.

And the Celtics of the 1960s may have been stacked, but so were the 83 76ers and 87 Lakers who Bird had to go up against. Given how talented Wilt was and how many great players he played with, it's widely believed that he should have won more than 2 titles.

On the other hand, it’s widely believed that the Lakers were the better team in 1984, but the Celtics just outplayed them.

All true points, I definitely know that Wilt was part of some great teams too. I also am in total agreement that Wilt was flawed in certain ways and his own ego and selfishness can be argued to have held back his success.

At the same time, I do maintain that the era of NBA basketball they were in was not built for parity and the Celtics had advantages that obviously could not be reproduced in any modern time.

Some of these details I was unaware of though, so definitely a good addition, thanks.

[Roger Murdock]

Wilts 2 are an indictment not an accomplishment. There were 8 teams and one other contender during much of his career.

Bird won titles in a league 3x the size and had to beat some extremely good teams to do so (Pistons, Lakers. 76ers

There were 8 teams for 2 of Wilt's seasons.

Fair

There were 10 teams when he won his first title. 17 teams when he won his second title

23 teams for all of Birds titles (up to 27 for the tail end of his career)