You know I can’t resist a good Wilt Chamberlain stat around here, and this one from Bomani Jones sent me scrambling to Stathead, so you know it’s a good one.
That’s pretty surprising, isn’t it? That the seventh-leading scorer in NBA history doesn’t hold any team’s points record? But that’s also been the case for a little under two years — it was April of 2021 when Steph Curry passed Chamberlain, who scored 17,783 points for the Dubs in five-and-a-half seasons.
Chamberlain played 429 games for the Warriors, while Curry has appeared in 876 so far with the only NBA team he’s ever been on.
Here’s the Warriors’ all-time list of per-game scoring, with a minimum of 100 games played:
Chamberlain (429 games) 41.5 ppg
Kevin Durant (208 games) 25.8
Rick Barry (642 games) 25.6
Curry (876 games and counting) 24.6
World B. Free (162 games) 23.4
So, you look at Chamberlain going from the Warriors back to Philadelphia with the 76ers in 1965, and his precipitous decline to… let’s take a look at the 76ers’ per list, where Hal Greer remains the all-time leading total scorer but “only” averaged 19.2 points per his 1,122 games (a total of 21,586), and still holds the record because those dummies traded Allen Iverson (19,931 points in 772 games)
Chamberlain (277 games) 27.62 ppg
Iverson (722 games) 27.61
Joel Embiid (389 games and counting): 27.2
Charles Barkley (610 games) 23.3
Julius Erving (836 games) 22.0
Chamberlain played his age 32-36 seasons for the Lakers, one of which was limited to 12 games — and he still led the NBA in rebounding each of his four healthy, if declining, seasons in Los Angeles (he only missed one other game the whole time). So, it’s not surprising that Chamberlain isn’t near the top of the Lakers’ all-time scoring list, and in fact he’s 24th with 5,985, a couple of spots above Nick Van Exel, who was pretty darn good in his five seasons with the Lakers.
On a per-game basis, Chamberlain had 17.66 with the Lakers, which puts him between Pau Gasol (17.73) and James Worthy (17.62), in 15th all-time for the franchise.
The Lakers’ list? That’s an interesting one, because the leader could very well play himself out of the top spot.
LeBron James (271 games and counting) 27.42 ppg
Elgin Baylor (846 games) 27.36
Shaquille O’Neal (514 games) 27.033
Jerry West (932 games) 27.030
Kobe Bryant (1,346 games) 25.0
O’Neal and West being separated by three-thousandths of a point per game over their careers in Los Angeles, spanning more than 1,400 games between them, is out of control.
Baseball season is coming, but we have a whole lot more basketball statistrata to work on here. Stay tuned!
We Can Pod It Out 77: Paperback Writer