>His actual ability, impact, and presence in his era FAR
>overshadow every other player in history. No other player
>presents such a mythical figure. We should be looking at
>Mike's greatness in awe
>as we already do, however there should be, without question,
>the following caveat whenever his name is mentioned as GOAT:
>"....but he's no Wilt Chamberlain".

That is already how I look at it, so, there are no "ifs" or "shoulds" there. Even with Shaq, as dominant as he was, he was CONSTANTLY measured against Chamberlain and easily fell short.

>Has there ever been a player so singularly dominant to return
>such little in the way of team success in terms of titles?

Yes, EVERY OTHER PLAYER IN HIS ERA. Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, et al. You can't find ANYONE active during the Cs dynasty with more titles. Chamberlain got two. Pettit only got one. West got none (it was post-Celtics), Baylor got none, Robertson got none (one later with Milwaukee) and so on. If you were not on the Celtics, you were not winning, period, and Wilt still managed to snag one title and then later a second one. This is a dumb ass argument. Wilt's teams were consistently deep in the playoffs, only his years in SF were weak from a team standpoint. The Philadelphia Warriors were a one man show and still competitive, once he got to the Sixers they were perennial contenders and won a title.

For
>all the talk about Kobe being selfish, NOBODY has been more
>about getting theirs than Wilt.

Oh really? Did I miss the year Kobe led the league in assists? Or when he led the league in scoring, rebounds, assists and I believe blocks also? Chamberlain was about that early in his career and why shouldn't he have been? Are you going to tell me some middling Warriors team would have been better if Wilt did NOT score 50 and get 25 boards a night? That they had better options. Wilt was, at that point, what Kobe and every other player only dreamed to be. A total mismatch for the league that re-wrote the rulebook. Later, when he had the team around him and an impetus to change his game, he absolutely did. If you read anything guys like Hannum and Ramsay wrote, it will confirm that. He was certainly stubborn and mercurial, but he made a HUGE adjustment in his game that you are completely overlooking in favor of non-truths.

Further, his era was
>unbelievably undersized in comparison to him. So sure, he put
>up unreal numbers, but titles matter at this level. 2 is
>great, but he's on the short list of guys you expect to have a
>whole lot more. Sure, he had the Russell/Celtics buzz saw to
>contend with, but.... he really should have been that buzz saw
>everyone else got slaughtered by en route to a title.

His teams and the Lakers were the only ones to consistently challenge the Cs, everyone else faded in and out. The Celtics had dominant TEAMS, the only knock against Wilt was Russell's swan song in 1969, and it wasn't like Boston didn't pull off two upsets in series just to reach the Finals. Seven game series with Wilt benched at the end over petty shit, but still a major blow in the Russ-Wilt debate.

As far being undersized, well let's take a look at Chamberlain's competitive vs Shaq's or Dwight Howard. Shaq had some guys early in his career and never separated himself from them (Ewing, Hakeem, Robinson). Later he was dominant against a bunch of respectable but hardly dominant imports. Chamberlain competed against not only Russell but Thurmond, Reed and how about Kareem? If you do the boxing the man who beat the man, anyone who played against Kareem goes WAY up into NBA history because his career was so long. So we can see what Wilt would have done against later greats and even in his OWN time, he played better competition than more recent dominant centers.

>It's funny that Kobe is mentioned, because he's that rare
>player with individual accolades and immense team success. Odd
>for a guy labeled as selfish his whole career. While people
>like to knock him for having great players around him, go look
>at the hall of famers Magic, Bird, Russell, and Wilt had
>around them when they got their rings and compare it to the
>number Kobe had on his teams when he got HIS rings. That's the
>most illogical, unfair and one sided argument imaginable for
>the 'Kobe is over rated' crowd, and yet it remains perhaps the
>most commonly consistent and adamant arguments in use.

I don't care about this paragraph, I don't think Kobe is "overrated" generally, anyway.

>Further, Kobe gets lambasted for not having as much in the way
>of overwhelming statistical seasons as, say, O- who put up all
>kinds of numbers that ultimately netted a solitary title.
>Basketball fans have such a hard time reconciling the divide
>between team and individual success when it comes to Kobe,
>because there's a VERY short list of guys who had such a
>balance of individual+team greatness. I mean... Jordan...
>Magic... Bird... Shaq, Cap......and uh... Russell... and who
>else really? Not much cake-and-eat-it-too action going on
>there on that level. 5 titles is a LOT.

Anyone pointing to the "titles" argument re: Robertson, West, Baylor, Chamberlain, et al just does not understand the era and how dominant the Celtics were.

>Oh, and lets not forget his sheer consistency over time. How
>many guys played at this level 17 seasons in, plagued with
>injuries over the last few years?
>
>Lets not forget his injuries over the past four years. How
>much time did he take off? He laid his eggs in that Boston
>series in 09, sure, and yet he still found a way to contribute
>in major ways (18 boards in a title game for a guard? lol.
>Come on.) despite a gaggle of injuries at the time. We give
>other players a pass for their injuries, yet Kobe played
>through and WON with injuries that realistically begged for
>time off. Oh, and he played in the Olympics during that
>period.

Right, because Wilt was inconsistent in some way and he didn't contribute in EVERY imaginable way (besides foul shooting) to wins all the time. If you are trying to sell me on Kobe impacting the game in more ways than Wilt, you will never succeed, because it didn't happen.

>Wilt though... for all his greatness, team success was more
>limited than it should have been based on just how immense his
>individual talent is. That balance isn't there; his individual
>accolades FAR outweigh his team accomplishments.

So you are saying that because he was the most gifted player ever, who put up the biggest numbers, who put up the biggest adjusted numbers (real it in Kalb's book) and who "only" won two titles, he is more overrated than ANY other player. Riiiiiiiight.

>It's laughable that Kobe has so many votes, but then I know
>where I am an who I'm talking to.

I should know who I am talking, a posturing bitch.