Michael Jordan, the GOAT? Former KU and NBA star Wilt Chamberlain didn’t think so

Michael Jordan the greatest basketball player of all-time?

Wilt Chamberlain didn’t think so.

“What would Michael Jordan do against me?” the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain once asked. “He can’t jump as high as me. I had a 52-inch vertical and Michael had a 43-inch vertical and I’m already seven inches taller than he is. He couldn’t run as fast as I could. When I was with the 76ers, we used to have races against the fastest guards and I’d bury them.

“He couldn’t shoot the ball any better except at the foul line, and I handled the ball as well as he did. I mean, how is he going to guard me? What is Michael Jordan going to do against Wilt Chamberlain one-on-one? Nothing.”

Chamberlain’s remarks came in what might have been his last in-depth interview just months before his passing of a heart attack on Oct. 13, 1999. He was 63. In Kansas City for a Tri-State autograph show in late June of that year, we sat for a one-on-one interview that lasted nearly 40 minutes while he signed 200 posters.

It was one of three interviews I had with Chamberlain. The first came Jan. 16, 1998, when he returned to the University of Kansas to have his No. 13 jersey retired. He met with the media for 50 minutes, left to meet with the Jayhawks basketball team and then took questions. He backed away from none of them, including those about his infamous 20,000 encounters with women.

“What people fail to write is that I also wrote it is better to love one woman 1,000 times than 1,000 women one time,” he said.

The next day, Wilt reveled in what old-timers still refer to as the biggest ovation in Allen Fieldhouse history during the retirement of his number at halftime of a KU-MU game. Wilt remained for more than two hours after the game to sign autographs.

Bob Billings, Wilt’s teammate at KU, got ahold of what I wrote from that day and sent it to Chamberlain. And Wilt in turn phoned me to say thank you. For 60 minutes we talked not so much about basketball but about his down-to-earth, positive outlook on just about everything and his “old school” values.

The best player of all-time will be forever debated, but there’s one truism that should not be: Wilt Chamberlain was the most dominant player of all-time.

He still holds 68 individual NBA records. Several are considered unbreakable: 100 points in one game, 55 rebounds in another. In 1961-62, he averaged 50.4 points and 27.2 rebounds. He scored 65 or more points 15 times; 50 or more points 118 times (Jordan had 34 games of 50 or more). A multiple MVP and Hall of Famer ... the list is endless.

In his first seven seasons, Wilt averaged 39.6 points a game. Then he turned into more of a passer. The only center to lead the NBA in assists, he averaged 7.8 assists, 24.1 points and 24.2 rebounds in leading Philadelphia to a championship in 1967. With an assortment of fadeaway jump shots, finger-rolls and thunderous dunks, he was a career 54 percent shooter and set an NBA record during his final season by hitting 72.7 percent from the field.

In 14 years, he never fouled out of a game. Seldom did he even leave the game for a rest, averaging more than 48 minutes one season. Blocked shots were not recorded during his career, but it was reliably reported that the count reached 25 in a single game. In films of 112 of his 1,305 NBA games, he averaged 8.8 blocks — far more than the current record of 5.56 held by Mark Eaton.

“When I retired (in 1973), I had four or five years left,” he once said. “I was still playing at a good level, leading the league in rebounding and setting a record for field-goal percentage, and we went to the NBA Finals. But I knew I was ready to give it up.”

A more longstanding debate over the years has centered on Chamberlain vs. Bill Russell. In 13 seasons, Russell averaged 15.1 points, 22.5 rebounds and 4.3 assists; Chamberlain averaged 30.07 points, 22.9 rebounds and 4.4 assists. But Wilt won “only” two world championships while Russell won 11, thanks in no small part to being surrounded by such NBA greats as Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman, John Havlicek, Frank Ramsey, Tom Heinsohn, Sam Jones, K.C. Jones and Satch Sanders.

With only eight or nine teams in the NBA then, the two rivals, Chamberlain and Russell, went head-to-head 10 times each season and five or more times in the playoffs. It was a rivalry that sparked controversy.

“He (Russell) was quoted in the paper that he had some obvious skills and some that were not so obvious, but all told, he felt his skills added up to a lot more than anyone else’s,” Chamberlain said.

“I wanted to ask, ‘Could you pass? Could you shoot? Could you dribble? He was a great rebounder and a great defender and he was on some great teams with great players and great coaches, and he was the centerpiece of all that. But how do you say his skills — and this was him talking — were greater than everyone else’s?

“I know a lot of guys with great skills who never won a championship and I’ve known guys who have won five, six, seven rings who weren’t as good. I don’t think Ted Williams won any major rings, but that didn’t stop him from being maybe the greatest hitter in baseball.”

Wilt had long since retired when Jordan emerged, but he alluded to a much-ballyhooed one-on-one clash in the 1980s between 7-foot-1 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the 6-7 Julius Erving.

“Kareem annihilated him, and at that time they were talking about Dr. J being the best of all-time,” Chamberlain said.

Jordan won six world titles in his 15 seasons and averaged a record 30.12 points, 6.2 rebounds and 5.3 assists. He was also the MVP of the NBA playoffs six times, won a record 10 scoring titles, made the All-NBA first-team 10 times and was all-defense nine times. The NBA’s own website states that “Michael Jordan by acclamation is the greatest player of all-time.”

Wilt obviously did not agree.

“All you have to do is get conversation with some basketball fans, and those 20-40 years of age would pick Michael; those 40-60 would pick Wilt,” Chamberlain said.

Keep in mind, those remarks came 21 years ago — before LeBron James and before Kobe Bryant.

“Everyone wants to see the greatest, so wouldn’t you as a fan want to say you saw the greatest?” he asked. “So, the modern fan, of course, is going to call him the greatest. I think Michael Jordan is a wonderful basketball player. But I don’t think he played in an era when there weren’t many wonderful players, and I don’t think of Michael as the greatest of all-time. The game is different now. Look at Oscar Robertson, who averaged in triple-doubles. How do you compare Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali?

“When people talk about Michael Jordan as the greatest, one of the things they talk about is his ability to do miracle work on the court. It’s the same way with Dr. J, but it still comes under two points: People like the flash and dash of Michael and Dr. J. People want to be entertained, and that was proven by a team called the Harlem Globetrotters, who were considered the greatest team all over the world. But nobody gave a damn who they played.

“So, when they talked about the greatness of Michael Jordan, they’re talking about the entertainment value of Michael Jordan. I don’t think anyone, and that includes myself, and this is not bragging, is going to pit Michael Jordan against me.”

This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.