Wilt Chamberlain’s feats have never seemed real, like tall tales that only grow more incredible with time. Take his eye-popping 1961-62 campaign, when he reached basketball’s kill screen by scoring 100 points in a single game for the Philadelphia Warriors, averaging 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds a game for an entire season. When he was later accused of being a selfish player who only cared about scoring, the 7ft 1in strongman became the only center before or since to lead the NBA in assists. Incredibly, he never fouled out of a game. As the durability of sporting records and achievements go, the Wilt conversation drifts past Michael Jordan territory into the realm of Don Bradman and Leonidas of Rhodes. For a larger-than-life figure beyond the court whose claims included manhandling a mountain lion in self-defense, coming this close to fighting Muhammad Ali at the Astrodome and racking up Genghis Khan numbers in the bedroom, it’s fitting that his nickname, the Big Dipper, borrowed not from a star but an entire constellation.
All of this provides an instructive framing for the rarefied air Joel Embiid has inhabited over the past few months. Last season the Philadelphia 76ers’ star center was an uncontroversial winner of the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award, even if Nikola Jokić’s sensational postseason wrought a sense of buyer’s remorse. This year, Embiid has been even better. Owing largely to an improved mid-range jump shot, he is averaging 36.1 points in 34.2 minutes per game, which is more points per minute than Wilt during his 50-point-per-game season. If he keeps it up, Embiid will become only the second player in NBA history to average more points than minutes played throughout a full season after Wilt in ‘61-62.
