3. Wilt the winner
One of the biggest knocks on Chamberlain is that he only won two NBA championships in his 14-year career: in 1967 with the 76ers and 1972 with the Lakers.
The argument for MJ or LeBron over The Big Dipper as the GOAT is basically this:
NBA Titles:
Michael Jordan — 6
LeBron James — 3
Wilt Chamberlain — 2
First, you have to remember that almost all of Chamberlain’s career was spent during the Celtics dynasty. In Bill Russell’s 13-year career in Boston (1957-1969), they won the NBA championship every year except two: in 1958 falling to the Hawks in a seven-game series and in 1967 to the 76ers, when Chamberlain & Co. whipped them in five games.
1967 was the only year Boston did not make the NBA finals in Russell’s career. If a fan wants to evaluate players strictly on rings, then Russell is far and away the best.
You can ask why Wilt rarely beat the Celtics, but the rest of the NBA could not either. The Celtics were 10-1 in the finals, so the top teams in the West fared no better.
Boston’s Red Auerbach was a shrewd general manager as well as coach.
Back then, a player’s pay was nowhere where it is now, so when a team’s star player retired, he needed a job to feed his family. Often, the only job available with a decent salary an NBA team had was head coach. Except for one year with the legendary Frank McGuire, Wilt’s coaches with the Warriors were all ex-players with little experience trying to go against one of the best in NBA history.
Boston also had a deep and talented squad. At one point, the Celtics had six future Hall of Famers on their roster.
Six times Chamberlain’s teams took on the Celtics in the in the East finals, they won one and three times fell in the seventh game. He also lost twice to the Celtics in the NBA finals (’64 and ’69), once in seven games. Not a lot of rings gathered but Wilt did also did not have six future Hall of Famers on his team either.
Back then there was no free agency (except for Wilt), so once a great team was put together, there was nothing to pull it apart.
When he was surrounded by talent, Wilt’s teams were virtually unstoppable. The 1966-67 76ers team was voted the greatest of all time and the 1971-72 Lakers set a then-NBA record for most wins with 69.
Chamberlain did make teams a winner, maybe not always ending the season with a championship, but always a title threat.
The year before he arrived in Philadelphia, the Warriors had 32 wins and finished in last place. With Chamberlain, as a rookie who had not played a meaningful game in over a year, they won 49 games and took the Celtics to six games in the East Division finals.
In 14 years, Chamberlain played on only one losing team, the 1962-63 San Francisco Warriors who went 31-49. The Warriors second-best player, future Hall of Famer Paul Arizin, had refused to leave Philadelphia when the franchise moved to the Golden State and they never filled his role. The next year, Chamberlain would lead the Warriors to the NBA finals.
So here is another statistic to consider when you want to talk about a player helping a team win:
Total losing seasons in career:
Michael Jordan — 5
LeBron James — 2
Wilt Chamberlain — 1
Chamberlain’s teams six times reached the NBA finals (winning twice), 12 times making the conference/division finals and only once did he not make the playoffs.
So, in 13 out of 14 seasons, Chamberlain helped his team reach at least the final four of the NBA. No player has matched that level of consistent success.