20 Second Timeout is the place to find the best analysis and commentary about the NBA.

Thursday, November 03, 2022

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: , , ,

posted by David Friedman @ 7:33 PM

2 comments

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Placing Kevin Durant's Incredible Scoring Streak in Historical Perspective

When a player does something great it is not only enjoyable to watch but his accomplishment also serves as a reminder of just how tremendous some of his predecessors were. One of my favorite sportswriting passages is William Goldman's take on Wilt Chamberlain's incredible records, which I discussed in a 2006 article about one of Kobe Bryant's scoring barrages:

Goldman wrote of Chamberlain, who still had offers to play in the NBA when he was in his early 50s, "the news finds him. Either when some team wants him to come back and play for them...or whenever a record is talked of." (the ellipses are present in the original text). Goldman continued, "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."

Kevin Durant is averaging 37.0 ppg, 5.6 rpg and 5.9 apg in 11 January games while shooting .522 from the field, including .392 from three point range. He is also shooting .884 from the free throw line while attempting 12.5 free throws per game. Durant may very well seize the title of "best player in the NBA" from LeBron James, who has worn that crown since 2009--and yet Durant's amazing scoring streak does not yet quite measure up to Bryant's best scoring streaks, let alone the unparalleled numbers posted by Chamberlain.

Bryant averaged 43.4 ppg in 13 games in January 2006, the highest scoring calendar month by an NBA player since Chamberlain averaged 45.8 ppg in March 1963. Bryant's total included an 81 point outburst versus the Toronto Raptors, the second best single game scoring performance in NBA history behind only Chamberlain's legendary 100 point game. Bryant also averaged more than 40 ppg in February 2003 (40.6 ppg), when he had nine straight 40-plus point games, the fourth longest such streak in NBA history; in comparison, Durant's current run features eight straight games with at least 30 points but "only" four games of at least 40 points. Subsequently, Bryant averaged more than 40 ppg in two other calendar months: 41.6 ppg in April 2006 and 40.4 ppg in March 2007. Chamberlain, who authored 11 calendar months during which he averaged at least 40 ppg, is the only player other than Bryant to accomplish this more than once.

Durant is performing extremely well and he deserves full credit for shouldering such a huge load for the Oklahoma City Thunder while Russell Westbrook is out with an injury but the fact that Durant can perform at a higher level than LeBron James--at least for a short period of time--and still not quite match the scoring exploits of Chamberlain and Bryant is a timely reminder of just how great Chamberlain and Bryant were in their respective primes.

Labels: , , , , ,

posted by David Friedman @ 7:21 PM

12 comments

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Dr. J, Air Jordan, Kobe, LeBron and William Goldman's Battle to the Death

Remember when Nike issued a T-shirt "explaining" Michael Jordan's hops? These words appeared in black, printed over a silhouette of Jordan skying above an image of Earth: "Air Jordan has overcome the acceleration of gravity by the application of muscle power applied in the vertical plane, thus producing a low altitude Earth orbit." I wore that T-shirt out back in the day, wore it until the fabric fell apart. I never once dunked while wearing it--at least not on a 10 foot rim--but I drained many three pointers. I liked Jordan's answer when an interviewer asked him if he really thought that he could fly. Jordan replied, "Yeah, for a little while. It may be a split second, but it's flying."

After Jordan averaged 37.1 ppg in 1986-87 to become the greatest single season scorer not named Wilt Chamberlain and then started stringing together championships a few years later, it would have been difficult to believe that any basketball player would become a bigger phenomenon on or off the court. Jordan was breaking records, making iconic commercials with Spike Lee and gazing in wonder at skyscraper-sized billboards portraying himself.

It is funny now to see so many Jordan fans get upset when LeBron James is compared favorably to Jordan; I know exactly how those Jordan fans feel, because that is how I felt in the mid-1980s when some people called Jordan the heir apparent--or Air Apparent--to Julius Erving. As a teenage fan of Erving, I resented the young Jordan. Jordan eventually became one of my favorite players but I'll never like Air Jordan more than I like Dr. J, just like the fans who grew up watching Jordan will never like King James more than they like His Airness.

William Goldman nailed it more than 25 years ago in Wait Till Next Year, the classic book that he co-authored with Mike Lupica: "The greatest struggle an athlete undergoes is the battle for our memories. It's gradual. It begins before you're aware it's begun and it ends with a terrible fall from grace. Stripped of medals, sent to Siberia...It really is a battle to the death." In 1976, no one would have thought it could happen to Dr. J but then Air Jordan showed up. In 1996, no one would have thought it could happen to Air Jordan but then Kobe Bryant and LeBron James showed up--and in 2013, no one thinks that it can happen to James but in 2023 someone else will show up. Goldman also correctly predicted that at least one athlete would escape that Siberian exile: Wilt Chamberlain. Chamberlain has not played in the NBA for 40 years and he passed away more than a decade ago but even casual fans still know his most famous numbers: 50 points per game for a season and 100 points in one game.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

posted by David Friedman @ 5:16 AM

0 comments