Wilt chamberlain bench press Continue .embed-container : position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed - position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; Wilt Chamberlain was and is the last what-if, or something like it. What he did as a player makes our current definition of dominant appearance distorted and, to be honest, silly. In the 1961–62 season with the Philadelphia Warriors, he averaged more than 50 points and 25 rebounds. Now, when I look at his career, there are so many hypotheses that come to mind. Chamberlain himself was asked a group of them. In 1997, Conan O'Brien wondered how Chamberlain would go against Shaquille O'Neal. He plays a completely different kind of basketball game, Chamberlain said. He uses his physicality and he's a big, strong guy, and that works well in today's game. If he was facing me and other guys of my time, not so well. I'm a bench boy pressing around £600 when I was at my best. A 600-pound bench is an absurd number – the kind you should see you should see believe – that makes it perfect for Chamberlain. It's natural to be curious about how Chamberlain's game would translate into the current era. Since the Sixers retired the number 13 jersey 29 years ago today, it seems like a good time to dive a little bit on this topic. (You can watch the full jersey ceremony retreat below, including an excellent opening from Marc sumoff.) Chamberlain's rebound would probably have brought good to the modern game. He has led the league in rebounds 11 times - even 34 to 36 years while finishing his career with the Lakers - and averages 22.9 scoreboards per game in total. In every era, a 7-foot-1, 275-pound player who set high jump records at the University of Kansas would be a standout rebound. We don't have official numbers on his block of shots, but it was a brand skill. He never fouled an NBA game and averaged just two fouls per game in his career. This is impressive, but it also suggests that he would have been pushed to increase his aggression and take more risks today. If Chamberlain had been born 55 or 60 years later, he would probably have been encouraged to diversify his game, to take the touch he showed on his fadeaway jumper beyond the three-point line. There would be more emphasis on drawing fouls, too, on using fake pumps and taking advantage of overly zealous defenders. Although free throws were a big weakness for Chamberlain (51.1 percent in his NBA career), he would probably have scored a higher percentage of his points on the foul line. How much he would have scored in the It's obviously a difficult question to answer. Although Chamberlain played during a relatively high score – teams averaged 118.8 points per game in 1961-62, compared to 111.4 this season – he was an outlier. He would play much less than 45.8 minutes per game in the name of load management, which would have diminished his scoring average, but perhaps extended his career. It is possible that the move to the three-point shot would have diminished its post-up opportunities because, for the most part, post-up is no longer an efficient or popular type of game. Joel Embiid is an exception, though he also attempts nearly four threes per game. Against the constant double teams, Chamberlain would be trained from a young age on how to systematically read the defense, identifying where extra men came from, where his teammates were stationed, and what the correct readings were. This may not have made a big difference, since he had natural talent as a passer and had the most assists in the NBA for the 1967–68 season. One of Chamberlain's greatest admirers among current NBA players is Embiid. For me, goat has always been Wilt Chamberlain, Embiid told Howard Beck of Bleacher Report last year. It would have been dominant in this era. There is a lot of impressive borderline mythical evidence to support Embiid's case. Click here to download NBC Sports' MyTeams app! Get full coverage of your teams and easily play Flyers, Sixers, and Phillies games on your device. Recently, Brow has been blogging about why she believes Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest of all time. While he supports his points very well and is an excellent writer, I disagree with his point of view. That's why. The problems with WiltWilt Chamberlain's anecdote may just be the king of anecdote. His whole career is littered with stories that seem too outlandish to be true. And that's where our problems begin. It is extremely common to inflate someone's perception by altering history with more exorbitant numbers or results. Let's take a look at the story of 20,000 women, who claim Wilt slept with 20,000 women during his lifetime. Using what we know about him, we have parameters. A: Let's say Chamberlain started doing it when he was 16. He started playing minor league basketball right now, so that it could lead to more women's interest in him. B: Let's also assume chamberlain stopped in 1999. That's how he began to have the heart problems that lead to his unfortunate death. He was 63 years old: Because of Chamberlain's heavy workload on the court, let's also assume he didn't have sex after playing an NBA game. That leaves us 16,110 days for Wilt. By dividing the number of women by the number of days available, we see that this story to be true, Wilt would need to have sex 1.24 times a night. This is a ridiculous number, and certainly not a sustainable number for over 40 years. This is not even accountable for the days that have spent working on other activities or playing non-NBA ball. This could increase the number even more. If we consider that he supported this in 1991, then that raises the number to 1.43.My verdict: False. I could believe 2,000. Not 20,000.Another famous anecdote heard of Wilt was his impressive physical statistics. For example, it has been claimed that Wilt could be fined more than £500. Consider this: the world bench record was 616 pounds in 1967, 556 in 1959 and 636 in 1971. Comparing Wilt to professionals who devote much of their time to the sport of powerlifting is disrespectful to them. To add to that, at £275, Wilt had no business raising that. The record of 1971 and 1972, Jim Williams, weighed 340 pounds at 6'1. Considering that much more of Wilt's weight would be lower due to his higher stature (which forces more support on his legs), it's incredibly stupid to think wilt could lift this. My verdict: False. Again, this is crazy. Shaq weighed close to what Jim Williams did, and it was built like an oak tree. He only benched 450 (I know, alone). Then why could Wilt? So the anecdotal evidence doesn't seem to favor Wilt. The extravagant stories told about him are bad for his legacy because they don't seem to be real. However, this is not a blow to him. This is just putting something out there - don't use anecdotes to try to support Wilt. They could be fibs. The problem with his statsThis is going to get a little big, but listen to me. Wilt's numbers look excellent superficially, but it's very interesting when you go deeper into the statistics. Firstly, FOR. FOR is a statistic that takes the cumulative impact a player has on the box score and reduces it to a number. Second PER, Chamberlain is fifth, behind Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal and David Robinson. Since PER is based on box score numbers and not other factors like Plus/minus-based statistics, it seems strange Wilt isn't the best at this. But that's because he played in an era when players took more shots and took more rebounds. Wilt's rebounding percentages over the past three years (where TRB% has been recorded and led the league), Wilt had the eighth-best rebounding percentage of all time. We also take a look at Win Shares for 48 minutes, a statistic that combines not only a player's statistical contributions, but also their Plus/Minus statistics and as far as minutes are concerned. In this category, Chamberlain ranks fourth. In Defensive Win Shares, a statistic that tracks a player's defensive impact, also places fourth place. My point in all this? Wilt was very good, but when you look at his peers in the GOAT race, he's behind them. The problem with his EraI knows this will be a bit average, but the 60s weren't anywhere near the peak of basketball. Remember when there was a problem in the early 2000s when people feared the game was too slow and ugly? This is more or less what the 1960s were like. The golden age of the NBA, which spans from 1985-86 to 1995-96, has eleven of the first twenty seasons in field goal percentage, while from 1959-60 to 1972-73 (Wilt's career) ranges from thirty first to fifty-eighth of the 71 seasons played in NBA history.