“Shaquille O’Neal Gets Away With What I Consider Murder”: Wilt Chamberlain Opens Up On How The NBA Changed The Rules Because Of His Dominance

Wilt Chamberlain

Wilt Chamberlain was one of the greatest scorers, dominating NBA teams on a nightly basis during his prime, finishing his career second all time in points per game.

Wilt played for three teams during his NBA caereer, the Philadelphia Warriors, the San Francisco Warriors, and of course, the Los Angeles Lakers.

There was never a time when Wilt didn’t look like he could go an drop 50 points. In fact, his best NBA season came in the 1961-62 season when as a Philadelphia Warrior, he averaged 50.4 points per game and 25.7 rebounds per game. Those numbers are definitely unmatched, even to this day.

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Wilt Chamberlain Reveals How NBA Changed Its Rules Favoring Players Like Shaquille O’Neal

There have been many dominant centers across NBA history including Wilt Chamberlain, and later on Shaquille O’Neal, who;s considered to be the most dominant NBA player of all time.

Centers during Wilt and Kareem’s era played a very different brand of basketball compared to more modern day centers, however. Even Shaq was privilege to the new rules, allowing him to get away with moves that would have been called fouls for Wilt or Kareem.

Now, many centers like to dip their shoulders into the bodies of their defenders to create space and in a way ‘push them off’ so they have more room to attack the basket.

This move was illegal when Wilt played. Centers would routienly get called for charging making these more modern plays completely useless.

The NBA used to favor defense far more, and that’s why rules like these existed. However, as the league has shifted more towards an offensive centric league, rules that penalize the offense have become far less strict. You can watch Wilt describe the differences in rules here, saying that he thinks Shaq gets away with murder with the way he played.

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Post Edited By: Ashish Priyadarshi
Los Angeles Lakers NBA Shaquille O'Neal Wilt Chamberlain

About the author

Ashish Priyadarshi

Ashish Priyadarshi is The SportsRush's content manager and editor. Ashish freelanced for 1 year in the NFL division before taking on an editorial role in the company. He then tacked on managing content while adding on a writing role in the NBA division. Ashish has been closely following the NFL and NBA since the 2012 season when the Patriots lost the Super Bowl and Derrick Rose was at the height of his powers. Since then, Ashish has focused on honing his knowledge for both leagues in, even writing crossover pieces. In his free time, Ashish is an avid basketball player, he loves to watch movies and TV shows, immersing himself in the cinematic world. Ashish studies computer science and data science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and would love to mesh his love for sports with his technical skills.

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