When Luka Doncic, Dallas’s 6-foot-7 do-everything Slovenian import, strafed the Knicks for 60 factors, 21 rebounds and 10 assists in a comeback extra time victory late final month, commentators breathlessly famous that nobody, not even Wilt, had ever posted such a line.
Walt Frazier, the Corridor of Fame guard who broadcasts Knicks video games and as soon as shared a backcourt with Garrett at Southern Illinois, has an thought why.
“What you principally see now are guys working up and down, dunking on individuals,” he stated in a phone interview. “Just a few groups buckle down on protection. They don’t double-team when somebody goes off. When somebody got here in and dropped 40 on me, it was all the time, ‘Clyde obtained destroyed.’ Now Doncic scores 60 and nobody even says who was guarding him.”
Frazier, 77, was echoing latest laments on the state of the game from the old-school coaches Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr. It’s no shock that appreciation, or lack thereof, for the up to date N.B.A. would break down alongside generational traces. For many who performed with or in opposition to Chamberlain, he’s basketball’s Babe Ruth, the sport’s all-time goliath. Everybody has a story, maybe on the tall facet, to inform.
Billy Cunningham, 79, a Corridor of Famer and Chamberlain’s teammate with the Philadelphia 76ers, cited the evening Gus Johnson, a really robust ahead for the Baltimore Bullets, went at Wilt with each intention of dunking over him as he’d completed earlier within the recreation.
Chamberlain didn’t simply block the shot, Cunningham stated: “He really caught the ball, and whereas Gus went to the ground, he simply stood there holding it over his head.”
Nevertheless grainy the video, nevertheless dorky the brief shorts, don’t attempt to persuade Cunningham and firm that what Chamberlain achieved was the results of an historical, inferior period. They are going to remind you that he averaged 45.8 minutes per recreation for his profession and rarely sat one out, in stark distinction to the extra coddled fashionable star — who, in equity, represents a far larger monetary funding to guard.