As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Hall of Famer’s 100-point game, Yahoo Sports senior NBA writer Vincent Goodwill and Yahoo Fantasy analyst Andy Behrens ponder how the man called “the Big Dipper” would fare in today’s game.
Video Transcript
[CROWD CHEERING AND BAT HITTING BALL]
ANDY BEHRENS: If we just threw the 1961 version of Wilt Chamberlain into the modern NBA, what does that look like? Is he, is he prime Shaq? Is he going to step out to the arc and try to be Joel Embiid? What, what does it look like?
VINCENT GOODWILL: I think he looks like a combination of maybe Karl Towns and Embiid. Because I think from a power standpoint, he is just as powerful. Like, you look at– there’s not a whole lot of Wilt Chamberlain footage, but the footage that you do see that looks fluid, man, he looked like an amazing athlete. He literally looked like he was jumping above the square. He didn’t look slow. He didn’t look like a plumber. He was very much in shape.
So I think as an NBA player, like, he would literally be illegal. Like, we look at these old guys like they couldn’t do [BLEEP], and I think that is complete trash. If you got a guy that can score off the glass, if you’ve got a guy that can score with both hands and dominate inside, you wind up playing like Joel Embiid, or DeAndre Ayton, or someone like that. So I think there will be a place for him in today’s game. Maybe I’m crazy.
ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah, one fun thing about Wilt is he was a great like track and field athlete at Kansas. So we have like track times, and heights, and stuff like that that would still play today. So we don’t really have to guess at his athleticism, right? Like, we know everything he was doing in an entirely different sport at which he was dominant is still valid in, in 2022. That’s crazy.
VINCENT GOODWILL: World class athletes.
