20 Second Timeout

Luka Doncic is Great--and He is Reminding Us How Great Wilt Chamberlain Was

Luka Doncic has made the All-NBA First Team each of the past three seasons while finishing in the top six in MVP voting each of those years as well. He is currently posting career-high numbers in scoring (36.1 ppg), assists (9.0 apg), steals (1.7 spg), field goal percentage (.514), and free throw percentage (.772). The only blemish on his resume so far this season is his three point field goal percentage (career-low .237).

Doncic has joined Wilt Chamberlain and Jack Twyman as the only players in NBA history to score at least 30 points in each of the first seven games of a season. The first graphic that I saw about Doncic's accomplishment neglected to note that (1) Chamberlain's record streak is 23 games, and (2) Chamberlain also had a streak of eight games. Doncic has tied Twyman for third place on the list, but Chamberlain still holds the top two spots, and it would take Doncic until December 5, 2022 to catch Chamberlain--assuming that Doncic keeps scoring at least 30 points in each game and does not miss a game.  

We are all able to see how great Doncic is, but pause for a moment to think about how great Chamberlain was to put together one streak more than three times as long as Doncic's and then another streak one game longer than Doncic's current streak. In Wait Till Next Year, William Goldman wrote an essay about Wilt Chamberlain called "To the Death." Goldman discussed how most athletes become less famous and less renowned as time passes, but that Chamberlain was so exceptional that his feats will not easily be forgotten: 

During Michael Jordan's amazing '86-'87, Wilt was always in the papers because Jordan was always scoring the most this's since Wilt Chamberlain or taking the most that's since Wilt Chamberlain. And that ain't gonna change, folks. Not in this century. Take big-scoring games, for example. Michael Jordan hit 60 points, twice last year. In the eighties, only two other men have done it, each once: Bernard King and Larry Bird. Four times this decade. Seven other guys did it once: Fulks (the first), Mikan, Gervin, West, Barry, Maravich and David 'oh-what-a-fall-was-there-' Thompson. Elgin Baylor did it thrice. And Wilt? Well, it's been done 46 times so you subtract. Wilt: 32. The rest of basketball: 14. At the present rate, we will be well into the twenty-first century before the NBA catches up.

Goldman wrote those words in 1988, and he was prophetic, as it took well into this century before the rest of the players in NBA history collectively produced as many 60 point games as Chamberlain. Kobe Bryant, with six such games, ranks a very distant second to Chamberlain. 

It is odd that the "Greatest Player of All-Time" conversation is often narrowed to just Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Wilt Chamberlain played his last NBA game in 1973, and he still holds more NBA records than any other player. Almost any time a modern player does something exceptional, he is the first player to do that since Chamberlain--and often, Chamberlain did more of that than any player before or since. I am not convinced that one can objectively select a "Greatest Player of All-Time," but I am absolutely convinced that the field of candidates is larger than two, and that the field must include Chamberlain.

Labels: Kobe Bryant, Luka Doncic, William Goldman, Wilt Chamberlain

posted by David Friedman @ 7:33 PM

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