Do Four Superstars Make a Superteam?

Don't Bank On It

Oy! Dept - Here we go again, folks. Another NBA franchice - noteably the Philadelphia 76ers - has faithfully (or in thIs case, desperately) decded that they can slap together a bunch of veteran superstars with various career tradjectories and zero experience playing together as a cohesive unit and expect them to beome an immediate superteam and simply waltz to a championship. This s a faulty strategy that can be seen as a copout, as opposed to bulding a title contender through the draft, shrewed trades and free agents (as needed). It's an option but not a safe one.

So, as the low-watt media and their dedicated followers devour this latest publicity scheme, the fact that NBA history is littered wth spectacularly disappointing superteam flameouts - including the 76ers' own Julius Erving - George McGinnis - Doug Collins experiment in 1977 - will never dawn on them. This isn't to say that they always fail - they don't - but depite all the hype, it's hardly a fool-proof solution and often ends up costing the club a bundle in talent, draft picks money and reputation.

In light of the superteam failures in recent years in Phoenix, Brooklyn, Houston and Phladelphia (again?!) among others, the one most often rcollected is one of the first and potenially most powerful combo ever sssembled. After the 1967-68 season ended the Los Angeles Lakers were despondent after losing the NBA Finals to the Boston Celtics for the fifth time in seven seasons despite having Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, the greatest scoring combination in NBA history. So, they decided to go for broke by acquiring none other than the most dominant player ever, Wilt Chamberlain, who once scored 100 points in one game.

Elgin Baylor (ll), Wilt Chamberlan and Jerry West

Up to that point, Baylor had career regular season averages of 27.7 points, 13.9 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game while West put up 27.4/6.2/6.7 as Baylor's teammate. Now the Lakers were planning to add Camberlain's 36.0/24.6/4.5 to the mix, thereby creating a frightening combination that looked invincible even for the Celtics, winners of 10 of the previous 11 championships (their only loss was to Chamberlain's1966-67 record shattering Philadelphia 76ers, one of the first successful superteams).

Match cut to 2026 and nothing's changed much in the minds of some NBA executives because now, by the same token, LeBron James (26.8/7.5/7.4) and Jaylen Brown (20.0/6.5/2.9) are set to join forces with Joel Embiid (27.6/10.8/3.7) and the up-and-coming Tyrese Maxey (21.1/3.2/4.8). Can they pull this off on the same team? People are drooling over the prospects but there are too many very real risks involved here to guarantee a championship run incuding those mentioned above. Here are a few:

Is it, "Man, he's 41!" or "Man, he's 41?" LeBron is amazing but he is 41 and after a record 23 seasons appears to be starting to slow down. His numbers have trended down for three consecutive years, he averaged only 20.9 ppg last season, his lowest since his rookie season and he's hasn't played all 82 games since 2017-18. And he is 41. [Interesting tidbit: Including postseason play, LeBron James has logged a staggering total of 73,476 minutes played. That's equal to 51 days and 36 minutes or 1,224.6 hours or more than 7 weeks. That's a hell of a lot of mileage. And (all together now) he's 41. It's only a decreasing matter of time before the Big Uh-Oh occurs. In the meantime...

CanThey Learn to be a Team? Of couse they could but they need to put aside their...

Egos. Easier said than done. When Lebron goes into player/coach/general manager/owner mode will Joel Embid get jealous and start pouting? Will Tyrese Maxie be upset that his average is down from last year? Will Jaylen Brown complain about not getting enough touches? 

Some of these can and likely could  happen. But for all we currently know, the 76ers may very well blast their way to the top. All this said however, nobody should even be thinking of making any guarantees; ony a big quesion mark.

An Open Letter to Steve Cohen

This wasn't supposed to happen 

Dear Mr. Cohen,

  In October 2020, you purchased a 95% controlling stake of the New York Mets from the Wilpon/Katz Group. As a fellow Mets fan out of early 1970s Great Neck coming off the Wilpon regime with dark memories of M. Donald Grant and the Tom Seaver trade always lurking, I was thrilled. Finally, our prayers for legitimate, competent cownership had been answered (and as I told my friend, "Hey! He's one of us!"). I still believe that's true but something in the results so far seems to have gone awry.

Your approach of building a sustained winning frachice through a strong farm system and responsible spending is the way the Yankees, Dodgers and Cardials hae been doing it fr many decades now. I know it'll work but, in my opinion, there's currently a fly in the ointment by the name of David Stearns who hasn't done well with your investment.

Wilt

[Updated 12//2026]

The Man They Called...

Most basketball fans only know the name Wilt Chamberlain because he scored 100 points in a game. They often qualify Wilt's herculean accomplishments by saying he's overrated because he was bigger and taller than anyone else in his era. Oh, sure. The fact is, there's a hell of a lot more about how spectacular an athlete he was than people know about.

Statistics and video footage of Wilt Chamberlain very strongly suggest that his combination of size (7'1", 275 lbs - he weighed in at 258 as a rookie), strength, athleticism, a vertical leap between 39 and 50 inches (depending on his age and who you talk to), unmatched durability and excellent fundamentals on both ends of the floor would still make him a better and more intimidating player than any big man in today's slower-paced NBA game.

Your Honor, I present the evidence:

Wilt Chamberlain's dominance started gaining nationwide attention when he was a teenager at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia. At Kansas University Chamberlain not only played basketball, he was also a star member of the Track and Field team. He ran the 100-yard dash in 10.9 seconds; the 440 in 48.9 seconds; shot-putted 56 feet; posted a 22' 8' inch broad jump and won the high jump in the Big Eight track and field championships three straight years. By the time he was 21 he had already been featured in Life, Look, Newsweek and Time magazines before he even turned pro.

Wilt left college early and spent a year playing for the Harlem Globetrotters  in 1958 before joining the NBA and once he got to the Philadelphia Warriors as a territorial draft choice the records began falling like dominoes. On October 29,1959, Wilt Chamberlain made his long-awaited NBA debut at Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks and immediately set rookie debut records for points (43) and rebounds (28) that still stand. It was a powerful omen. 

0You know a player is dominant when the powers that be change rules only because of his extraordinary pootertal. That's how the NCAA and NBA responded to Chamberlain. In college, Kansas devised an inbound play from under the basket where the inbounding player would throw the ball over the backboard to a leaping Chamberlain who would jam it home. The NCAA banned that move,as well as some others before he even played one game. The NBA not only did the same, they also widened the free throw lane. In addition, goaltending, which was legal then, was outlawed due to Wilt's uncanny ability to block shots within 10 feet of the basket no matter where the shot originated. Curiously, Wilt was a very poor foul shooter. He had a good shot away from the basket (he had a deadly baseline jumper) but at the line he was one of the worst. He tried every method: two-handed, one handed, even underhanded, to no avail. Late in his career he began shooting from a foot behind the foul line. About the only thing he didn't try was bouncing the ball in. It's widely speculated that he was working on a way to leap from the foul line and release the ball less than a few feet from the rim before touching the ground. The league, well aware of Wilt's track and field background, nixed that idea, too.

Opponents exploited Wilt's foul line woes by employing the original version of "Hack-a-Shaq"; intentionally fouling him (hard) away from the ball. As a career 51.1% free-throw shooter, sending Chamberlain to the line was statistically better for defenses than letting him score an easy basket in the pain9i Wilt was scrarched,bruised and battered and nearly retired in protest before the league stepped in and enacted new rules to restrict the stragety.

With Chamberlain overwhelming opponents game after game he immediately became a sensation and the NBA's biggest drawing card since the legendary George Mikan. He went on to shatter virtually every scoring and rebounding record (as a rookie, remember) and wrapped up his first year in the NBA with averages of 37.6 points and 27 rebounds a game. Fans and media alike were dumbfounded. Nobody had ever seen this kind of dominance before. Some people feared he would wreck the game. He was criticized and called selfish and a loser, leading him to bitterly lament, "Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath."

Wilt raised the ante in his second year (38.4-27.2) and in 1961-62, Wilt prceeded to make almost every scoring recorcjd unreachable. HS scoring average climbed to a surreal 50.4 points a game, highlighted by his unbeatable 100-point effort as well as a 3-overtime game where he poured in 78 points and grabbed 43 rebounds and another game of 73 points and 36 rebounds 

Here's Chamberlain's game log from that iconic season. Any one of these games would be a career achievement for any player. Wilt Chamberlain was achieving it virtually every game. 

In the current era where nobody plays all 48 minutes of a game, Chamberlain averaged a seemingly impossible 48.5 minutes a game in 1961-62. He played every minute of a game (including overtimes) 79 times that season, including 47 in a row.

In his 7th season Wilt scored his 20,000th point in his 499th career game, which by far remains (and likely will always remain) the record for the fastest to achieve that milestone.

Wilt never fouled out of a game, which spanned 1,205 games including 160 playoff contests.

He's the only player to record a 40/40 (at least 40 points and 40 rebounds in one game) and he did it five times.

Six players have scored 70 or more points in a game. Wilt did it six times.

Michael Jordan scored 50 or more points 31 times in his career. Wilt Chamberlain did it 45 times in one season and 118 times in his career.

The second best scoring average by a player not named Chamberlain was Elgin Baylor's 38.3 in 1961-62, the same year as Wilt's 50.4. That makes Wilt's number 31.6 percent higher than Baylor. Now let's put that into perspective:
• The highest batting average for a season in Major League Baseball  since 1934 is Tony Gwynn's .394 in 1994. A batter exceeding Gwynn by 31.6 percent would have to hit .518.
• The all-time single season rushing record in the NFL is 2,105 yards by Eric Dickerson in 1984. To exceed Dickerson by 31.6 percent a runner would have to gain 2,770 yards.

• The NHL single-season record for goals is 92 by Wayne Gretzky in 1981-82. To exceed Gretzky by Chamberlain's pace, a player would have to score 121 goals.

There are those who claim that all Chamberlain could do was score. However, much to their ignorance, Wilt had 78 career triple-doubles, more than Larry Bird (59), Michael Jordan (31) and Kobe Bryant (21). Wilt had 31 of them in one season.

In 1960 Wilt grabbed an astonishing 55 rebounds in one game - against Bill Russell, no less. He's said to have been more proud of this record than his 100-point game because it was harder to do.

Wilt Chamberlain doesn't just block this shot, he catches it and turns it into a rebound.

In 1966-67 Wilt won his first championship (dethroning the then 8-time defending champion Boston Celtics in the playoffs along the way) when he changed his playing style, averaged 24.1 points, 24.2 rebounds and 7.8 assists a game and led the Philadelphia 76ers to a 68-13 record and the NBA title. Here's Wilt's game log from that historic season.

Chamberlain followed up that season in 1967-68 by becoming the only center to lead the league in total assists in a season with 702. His numbers were 24.3/23.8/8.6. The peak of that season ocurred on February 2, 1968 when he became the first player in NBA history to get a double triple-double (at least 20 points, 20 rebounds and 20 assists in one game). It took 51 years before Russel Westbrook became the second one. Here's the box score of Wilt's game.

Occasionally, somebody would count hifferent stats during a given game. In 1968 Chamberlain produced an unofficial quintuple-double with 53 points, 32 rebounds, 14 assists, 24 blocks and 11 steals.

  

Wilt had 40 or more rebounds in a game 14 times. Bill Russell did it 11 times. The only others members of the 40-rebound club are NBA Hall Of Famers Nate Thurmond and Jerry Lucas who each did it once. 

When he left the NBA in 1973 he held 126 NBA records. Up to this date he still holds 72.

Off the court, Wilt could palm a bowling ball, bench press 465 lbs, clean-and-jerk 375 lbs and deadlift 625 lbs among other feats of strength and life after basketball also saw him become a Hall Of  Fame volleyball player. 

Quotes

NBA great Johnny Kerr -- "Once Wilt got upset with me and dunked the ball so hard it went through the rim with such force that it broke my toe as it hit the floor."

Hall Of Fame coach Alex Hannum -- "When I coached the San Francisco Warriors, I thought Al Attles was the fastest guy on our team--by far. We used to gamble a lot--which player could jump the highest and run the fastest.  So I set up a series of races, baseline to baseline. In the finals, it was Wilt and Al Attles and Wilt just blew past him. I'm convinced that Wilt Chamberlain is one of the greatest all-around athletes the world has ever seen." 

Al Attles -- "I'd see what the other players were doing to Wilt and what the officials were allowing, and I'd get more upset than if it were happening to me. It wasn't that Wilt couldn't defend himself...If he ever got really hot, he'd kill people, so he let things pass."

New York Knick Darrell Imhoff, the starting opposing center the night Wilt scored 100 points -- "I can't have a nightmare tonight. I've just lived through one."

Former teammate Tom Meschery -- "A lot of people are walking around today only because Wilt never lost his temper."

Hall Of Fame Boston Celtic K.C. Jones -- "He stopped me dead in my tracks with his arm, hugged me and lifted me off the floor with my feet dangling.  It scared the hell out of me. When I went to the free-throw line, my legs were still shaking. Wilt was the strongest guy and best athlete ever to play the game."

Rugged power forward Paul Silas -- "One time, when I was with Boston and he was with the Lakers, Happy Hairston and I were about to get in a scrape. All of a sudden, I felt an enormous vise around me. I was 6-7, 235 and Wilt had picked me up and turned me around. He said, 'We're not going to have that stuff.'

I said,'Yes sir.'"

Hall Of Fame center Bob Lanier who was 6'11", 260 lb. -- "When he picked me up here and put me down there, I thought he was the baddest!"

Hall Of Fame power forward/center Elvin Hayes -- "He was such an awesome physical specimen. To go up under Wilt Chamberlain, to be down there and look up at him when he's towering up over you waiting to dunk, was a terrifying picture. Everyone was scared when he got that "Don't try to stop this" look.

Hall Of Famer Walt "Clyde" Frazier -- "His legacy is comical. When you read about his records, it makes you laugh. He has records that are just remarkable. I don't care if he was 10 feet tall, the things that he did."

Chamberlain showed some interest in football which attracted the attention of legendary coach Hank Stram, who invited Wilt to a workout. Here's what happened:

It's a credit to Wilt Chamberlain's awesome athletic ability that he kept getting comeback offers for 18 years after his retirement. The Bulls, Cavaliers, Nets, Knicks twice, Sixers twice, Mavericks, Suns, Clippers - those are all the teams that tried to get me in the last decade," Chamberlain said in 1991. "It's great for the ego to think at age 50, 52, 53 that guys think I could still go out and play. And personally, I think I could do it. But I have no desire. The time I had was enough."

Wilt's career numbers 

A list of some of his records and achievements:

And some video highlights.

 

 

 

NBA All Star Game is D.O.A.

Okay, enough is enough.  I knew this latest new NBA All-Star Game format was stillborn as soon as they announced it. Who the hell's responsible for these idiotic ideas? 

It's bad enough that TNT Sports horned their way into the act with the NBA allowing TNT's "Inside the NBA" hosts Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal, Kenny Smith and Candace Parker to pick the players for the four teams named for them. But interrupting the first game to present them with going-away gifts (They're not retiring, they're moving to ESPN next year) as if crowning them as the highlight of the entire event was disheartening enough but whoever thought having Kevin Hart as the emcee was a hot idea owes the fans an explanation and an apology, if not his resignation. 

"Inside the NBA" is an extremely popular show, I get that.  But instead of making a bad product virtually toxic they could've devoted their own show for the cause or TNT could've run a special broadcast for it but no, the NBA gladly allowed TNT to stop their all-star game so they could all obnoxiously pat themselves on the back in the name of publicity, greed and sheer arrogance.

So, now what? Every year the league and network powers that be concoct a new format to improve on the previous year's in a pathetic attempt to convince the fans that they know what the fans want. However, they keep going further in reverse. Every time. In fact, plans for another format for next year is already being leaked but honestly, should anyone really give a damn anymore?

If they all were genuinely serious (and competent) about improving the NBA All-Star Game I'm happy to offer a few ideas (not that they care). First of all, go back to the game's roots. Return and maintain the East vs. West format because that will give the fans an automatic geographical rooting interest.

Then, call players and coaches alike and drive it into their collective heads that they need to take pride in their conference and play as if they care. I'm not saying to treat it with playoff intensity, just play it as a competitive basketball game, not a combination of a playground scrimmage and the Harlem Globetrotters. The message should be clear: "Show them what got you to this level. That's why you were voted in."

And then, perhaps, they could add a scrimmage during the events of the day before featuring all the acrobatics they can muster in two 15-minute halves.

Since its inception in 1951 the NBA All-Star Game has mostly been a high-scoring affair and that's was fine until it got out of hand the last 10 years leading up to the 2024 game's preposterous 211-186 score. There's nothing wrong with being fancy at times and having some fun but it should be in moderation, never the norm, especially when the fans are footing the bill.

NBA All-Star Game Changes

Why Is the Obvious Solution So Evasive?

Once again the NBA is re-re-re-I say, rearranging their All-Star Game's format in their latest attempt to make the game more entertaining for the fans and, as usual, they've missed again. The solution to that seemingly endless problem's right in front of their faces and yet they're completely blind to it. Well, there's convincing to be done and I'll gladly fire the first salvo.

In recent years, the NBA All-Star Game has de-evolved from an intense competitive contest to a ridiculously high-scoring mess. Defense goes right out the window along with the integrity of the game. The league's responses have been numerous format alterations, each one more confusing - and less interesting -  than the last. 

This one is absolutely absurd. I'll just say that naming the teams after TNT NBA analysts and naming those anylists "general managers" of those teams is an obnoxious way for the network to steal the spotlight away from the game solely for self-promotional purposes. I mean, how much Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal and Kenny Smith can one take? It's nauseating.

If you want the full details of this charade, click here. I dare you.

The problem is the players and NBA officials - most notably commissioner Adam Silver - have forgotten the whole point of an All-Star game. It's supposed to be about competition, not bells, whistles and media bullshit. It's East vs West and pride in your conference, not a "Can You Top This?" scrimmage. It's gotten boring. 

Other than changing the name to the All Showboat Game, the answer to avoiding games like last year's 211-186 farce (Who cares who won, right?) is the kind of painfully obvious solution that always seems to elude the powers that be:

                     Make. The. Game. Competitive.

Forget all the damn window dressing for what's become a deformed product. It hasn't worked because the very product itself - the game - is badly in need of repair. The All-Star game had no fan indifference years ago when the players cared about winning the game. That goal should be reinstilled into the thinking of players and coaches alike as well as those that organize it. 

There's nothing wrong with returning to a proven method. An exciting, competitive All-Star Game will undoubtedly draw more fan interest than the annual sideshow it's become.