Do you think the title is true or false? In my opinion, I think Jokic clears Wilt Chamberlain offensively. Wilt is probably the better scorer due to the records but skill wise, Jokic clears him via the eye test with his insane skill gap and that compensates for Wilt’s athleticism gap. Nothing more to say on playmaking because Jokic is easily the greatest playmaking big of all time.
Does Jokic’s efficiency and skill gap offset Wilt’s record breaking numbers and athleticism or do you think Wilt is just better offensively?
Wilt was a pretty selfish scorer early on and didn’t really develop his playmaking until he got to the Sixers and shot a lot less. His defensive impact was usually bigger than his offensive impact most years.
As an overall player I’d take Wilt over Jokic easy but purely in terms of offense I’d say Jokic is legitimately comparable to the most impactful offensive players ever like Oscar, Magic and MJ.
While he was on the Warriors his team’s offensive performances were 100% correlated with him taking more shots. On the Sixers, it was a different story because A. He had much better teammates and B. The year they had the best offense ever Wilt literally shot 16% better from the field than any other player in the league
Sure, I guess. But anyone that far back is gonna be a little apples and oranges
I agree with u/MrAppleSpoink. It’s hard to make a one for one comparison. Wilt did basically change the game of basketball in ways very very few players can say they are responsible for. He, MJ, Steph. Bron broke teams with his dominance.
Jokic is absolutely placing himself amongst those giants but it is a completely different game.
Wilt is one of the only all-time greats who can legitimately be accused of statpadding for himself rather than playing for the team(many of his peers agree as well)
That alone knocks him down a tier or two IMO
Impossible to say, if we say Nikola Jokic and Wilt were both born in the 30’s, and had access to the exact same gyms, workouts, lack of 3pt lines, nutrition we would have no idea what Nikola would look like. He may be in better shape, since food wasn’t nearly as unhealthy in the 50’s. He also wouldn’t have access to the trainers, watching training and nutrition videos on the internet, decades of role models that he would have shaped his game after etc.
wilt an unstopable scoring machine, we will probably never see another big man put up 100 points in an game, when people talk stat padding he basically invented that.
Unless the nba adds an 4/5 point line in the future perhaps changes in the rules that favor jokic maybe but it seems highly unlikely.