TheSunGod:

Why must Wilt Chamberlain never receive any respect?

He gets respect from me.

His whole career-- his whole life-- he was villified and ignored for having a physical edge on the competition. He was actively rooted against his entire career by casual fans and is criticized for "only" winnning two championships.

Not by me. I rooted for him and don't think it was his fault that his teams didn't win more titles. At least, not in the years I know a lot about, which were his Lakers years.

And now that he's gone, the media insists on using Kobe's 81 point (2 assist) game to attack him once again.

I don't know who attacked him. I didn't. I just said I think 81 points today is a greater achievement than 100 in 1962. They're both silly stunts, but I'm more impressed with the 81 than with the 100, given the competition. It's a statement about the competition. It's like saying I'm more impressed with the Steelers' win over the Broncos Sunday than I am with the Seahawks' win over the Panthers. That's not a disparagement of the Seahawks. It's a statement about the relative quality of the Broncos and the banged-up Panthers.

What was Wilt supposed to do, not score as many points?

I don't understand the question.

You point to Kobe's statistical output and say "Wow, look at that!" But when anyone talks about Wilt, it's "You know, you can't really judge Wilt by the numbers..."

I didn't say that.

What?

What?

Look, I don't know what the Wilt-persecution complex is about here. I think Wilt was an incredible, dominant player, a magnificent athlete. Would he have been the dominant player in the league if he played today? Would he have dominated Shaq? I don't know the answer and I don't know how to figure out the answer. I think Wilt was a better athlete and a more skilled player. I don't know how to prove that.

But the idea that Wilt didn't have a greater physical advantage over the opposition than anyone today is preposterous -- I'll go your ridiculous one better. Wilt was playing against reasonably tall dishwashers. If Dale Davis had played in the '50s and '60s, the exact same Dale Davis, he'd be in the Hall of Fame. Inner circle. Find some film of NBA games from 1962. Really. No question Wilt played against Russell and Kareem, but I didn't see him dropping 70 on them, and it's not like there weren't good centers Shaq has played other than Hakeem. And basketball's not just a one-on-one game. There's no comparison in the overall level of play. It's not just a different quality of play. It's practically a different sport.

That's not Wilt's "fault," of course. He couldn't control who he played against. Then again, no one around here blamed him for it either.

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Daniel W.:

So Chamberlain's achievements weren't as impressive as Kobe's because Wilt was just so much more dominant than Kobe was?

No, that's not what I wrote. I was merely comparing two very specific games, Wilt's 100-point game and Kobe's 81-point game. The 81-point game came against much tougher competition. Kobe would have dominated the 1962 NBA game too. Maybe not as much as Wilt did. But plenty. I am more impressed by Kobe's 81, because it was scored against tougher competition, than by Wilt's 100. Wilt was a man among boys. That's partly because he was a physical specimen ahead of his time, but partly because the NBA didn't yet attract the best athletes.

Last I heard, 100 was greater than 81. By quite a bit, actually. Why should math be subjective?

I averaged about 20 points a game in 20-minute rec-league games when I was 10. So I guess I was a better player than anyone in the NBA. They don't score a point a minute.

Eric: Kobe's team may have been in on it to a certain degree. I only saw highlights also. It may have been to the degree of feeding the guy with the hot hand. It may have been a little more than that. (It also may have been that they weren't GIVING him the ball, they just were never GETTING it from him.)

But they weren't in on it to the same degree the Warriors were in '62. They were fouling the Knicks on defense to get the ball back, despite having a lead in the fourth quarter. The Lakers didn't do that. And the Warriors simply fed Chamberlain the ball in a way the Lakers didn't with Bryant, even though the Lakers also weren't taking shots. The Warriors averaged about 26 assists a game in 1962, and they had 39 that night. The Lakers average 20 a game, and had 18 Sunday.

As for Bryant "only" leading the league in shot attempts, he also leads the league in efficiency according to John Hollinger's ratings (http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/statistics) and is fifth in the league according to the NBA's (http://www.nba.com/statistics/player/Efficiency.jsp), which I believe are not as good. Efficiency is an overall measure of the player's contributions.

The idea that the Lakers would be better if Bryant would rein himself in and let his teammates (Go, Smush Parker! Why give the ball to Kobe when you can give it to Chris Mihm!) contribute more, well, I'm finding that a little silly.

Another way to adjust for tempo is to note that Kobe took 46 of his team's 88 shots Sunday, 52 percent. The night he scored 100, Wilt took 63 of his 115 shots, 55 percent.

I don't know how to figure out the relative tempos of the games because the Wilt box score doesn't have offensive rebounds or turnovers. But if we just divide by shot attempts, the Lakers had 76.5 as many shot attempts as the Warriors, at least suggesting that in a game of similar tempo, Wilt's point total would have been in the 70s.