It just passed midnight here, now, on June 9th, 2024. And I just checked the ESPN app and saw that Chet Walker had died, a name that sounded familiar to me but didn’t ring a bell enough to exactly pinpoint it.
But now I remember. He is one of the guys that can help prove that Bill Russell was easily better than Wilt Chamberlain and that no one should dare to argue otherwise.
You see, Chet Walker was one of the members of the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers. You know, the team that won a then-record 68 games (better than anything Russell and the Celtics had done to that point) and won the championship. But of course, Wilt’s teammates all sucked and he won 68 games by himself, right?
But let me not get too far ahead without saying RIP to Chet Walker. It sucks that you had to die for me to write this, but 84 years was a great run. Congrats to you and a much-belated congratulations to you and company for winning that championship 57 years ago.
But yeah, just wanted to quickly go over my argument why, without a doubt, Bill Russell is better than Wilt Chamberlain. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.
You see, as I alluded to, Wilt Chamberlain had plenty of quality teammates during his tenure with the Philadelphia 76ers. Chet Walker, of course, was one, but you also have to include guys like Hal Greer, who averaged 22.1 points (only 2 fewer than Chamberlain) in 1967 and Billy Cunningham, a crafty lefty who would go on to be a solid coach, as well, winning a championship with Philly in 1983, not to mention an MVP trophy 10 years before in the ABA. No small feat.
And that wasn’t it. There were two other double-digit scorers there as well. Not exactly Havlicek, Cousy, Sam Jones, and Tommy Heinsohn, but it’s not exactly the Cowboys against a Pop Warner team. What else could you want??
Quite simply put: it is ludicrous to suggest that something holding Wilt back in the Wilt-Russell debate is his teammates, saying that Chamberlain would have won as many titles as Russell had he had not been playing with scrubs.
Chamberlain’s teammates were no scrubs. at least in Philadelphia. Now, if you want to talk about his days in the City of Brotherly Love with the Warriors, and later San Francisco, then you might have more of an argument. However, playing in the Western Division, it isn’t exactly the same: fewer matchups with Russell, no playoff head-to-heads, but still: Wilt had three-and-a-half seasons with the 76ers with three high-level teammates, at least, and only beat Russell one time.
Also, those of us on Russell’s side have ELEVEN rings. Let me repeat that: ELEVEN. To suggest, even with just that piece of evidence, that Wilt Chamberlain was better than Bill Russell seems, again, completely ludicrous. How could you argue that a man who won eleven titles, in the league at the same time as a man who won just one, with both players serving as the focal point of their team’s strategy, be worse than the other??
Russell knocked Wilt out of the playoffs nearly every year. As I said, the only time Wilt ever beat Russell in the playoffs was 1967. Other than that, Russell won the other seven times in the 10 years they were in the league together, topping it off with a win over the Lakers in the Finals in 1969.
Of course, that’s where Wilt arguers will go after the team vs. team debate. Russell’s team, the Celtics, won 11 because of the team itself; not Russell of course, right? And Wilt only won one title, they say, at least while Russell was still active, not because of the Celtics, no, because Wilt was playing with bums and his respective organizations couldn’t put a team around him.
That’s just not true. Wilt had plenty of support, with guys like Chet Walker and the rest. He even had a fellow hall of famer in Paul Arizin with the Warriors.
I just always hate when people act like the Celtics had eight hall of famers to fill out their rotation. They did, of course, but the reason people like Satch Sanders and Tommy Heinsohn are in the Hall of Fame isn’t because of them. They have five, six, or seven titles or more. Because of Bill Russell. All because of Bill Russell.
But anyway, just got me going a little bit on Wilt-Russell. And just to close out, here are two more points I want to refute for anyone who still might think that Wilt Chamberlain could be better than the great Bill Russell. Not to be confused with the not-as-great Dodgers infielder from the 1970s.
—Wilt scored 50 points per game in a season and averaged way more points than Bill Russell. Isn’t that fucking super?? Don’t care that the Warriors tried to make Wilt into a Harlem Globetrotter for a season and average 50. You like round numbers, kid? The team finished an unremarkable 49-31 and lost in the second round to the Celtics. Don’t care how many points you average, Russell beat Wilt in the playoffs once again, which matters more than some really impressive stat. Here’s a round number for you: still zero titles for Wilt after averaging–gasp–50 points per game??? Oh my freaking God! Is that God himself out there???
It must have been fun and impressive to watch and live through, but why wasn’t Wilt able to do it again?? Why did he only do it for one season? Was the NBA not as important back then, so the Warriors or Wilt thought of the idea to average exactly 50 for some publicity stunt? I don’t know. Did only Russell and the Celtics care about winning and everyone else was just making a paycheck? How important were the playoffs to everyone else?
Because if the NBA really was just, like, an exhibition tour, then I guess it really doesn’t matter who was greater. But obviously something changed at some point, because now all anybody cares about is how many rings you have. And if you want to compare this Russell-Wilt thing to a Jordan-LeBron debate, then you can’t tell me that 11-1 in championships (or 11-2 if you want to count Wilt’s post-Russell era championship) doesn’t completely toss the argument out the window.
–Bill Russell doesn’t average enough points to be compared to Wilt. This is pretty similar to the previous point, but I’m going to put it under a different heading.
For his career, Bill Russell averaged just 15 points per game. Nowhere near the 30.1 points per game that Wilt averaged. Looking side-by-side, that is an immediate mismatch.
However, this one is pretty quick: That wasn’t Russell’s game. And, obviously, every team Wilt was ever on, it was probably just ‘feed him the ball and that’s our whole offense’ every single time he laced them up.
Obviously, at that point, you’re bound to put up some points. And really, now, the 50-point season feels like an anomaly. And if that really was the coach, or Wilt himself, or the organization, then it diminishes the record. And hey, Michael Jordan averaged 37 in 1987, both he and Wilt scoring their most points in their third seasons in the league. How different are those seasons, really? And again, why couldn’t Wilt do it again?? Was it just about seeing how many points one single man could average, and once he did it once he went back to trying to win every game instead of score the most points?
The same thing it sounds like, I know, but it really isn’t. Did Wilt even care about the score that season? Or only his personal point total? Because that isn’t basketball. Not really something to hold in the air like a trump card when anyone with Russell on top with be saying 11-2 for the rest of time.
Imagine this: you’re in the league for 13 seasons and you win the title 11 times, serving as the best player on the team for every season, and even winning as player-coach for three of them. Meanwhile, there’s this guy out in San Francisco who scores a bunch of points, but you beat him more or less every time when you go head-to-head.
You’re saying Wilt’s better?? Give me a break.
Of course, Russell, the greatest defender in the history of the league, and imagine if they were keeping track of blocked shots to measure it, guarded Chamberlain and there are countless stories of Russell getting in Wilt’s head and how much he dominated the matchups.
I don’t need specific numbers here. Wilt himself has even admitted that Russell was better! What more is there to say!!
So I guess that’s where I’ll stop. Russell over Chamberlain for sure. And RIP Chet Walker again. Hope it wasn’t too bad playing with the ball vacuum of Wilt Chamberlain. Hey, at least you got to retire from the league and make it to 84 years young, huh??
CHILL YOURSELF DYLAN WOODS 