Wilt Chamberlain is one of the most decorated basketball players of all time. A variety of NBA records stand in The Big Dipper’s name to date.
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The hyper-athletic center averaged 30 points and 22 rebounds for his career, an incredible feat for anyone. Wilt remains the only person to ever score 100 points in a game and average 50 points for a season. Two feats, in all likelihood, shall most likely go unrepeated.
Also read: Kobe Bryant’s 81 points or Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 – which performance was better?
However, Wilt was always someone who was under the microscope. The primary reason? Wilt’s inability to translate individual success into team success. The Big Dipper, despite all his individual accolades, managed to win only two NBA championships. Wilt’s NBA Finals record, a losing 2-4, posed a glaring asterisk next to a glorious career.
What hurt Wilt further, was the success enjoyed by his biggest rival and contemporary, Bill Russell. Bill Russell, despite being an inferior individual talent, led his teams to 9 more NBA championships than Wilt. The Big Dipper’s “big game” reputation took a major hit there, one noted by the NBA community, it would appear.
Rick Barry, a contemporary, and rival, seems to be one of those who believed Wilt wasn’t a winner. And Barry didn’t just hold on to his opinion in private, he made it available for the world to read.
What opinion about Wilt Chamberlain did Rick Barry publicize?
In his book, Confessions of a Basketball Gypsy, Barry came out with a scathing critique of The Stilt. And in the words of the former Warriors star, this was an opinion shared by a considerable chunk of players.
Barry, while calling Wilt a “loser” and “terrible in big games”, went on to state that “I’ll say what most players feel, which is that Wilt is a loser…He is terrible in big games. He knows he is going to lose and be blamed for the loss, so he dreads it, and you can see it in his eyes, and anyone who has ever played with him will agree with me, regardless of whether they would admit it publicly”.
A former NBA champ himself, Barry definitely knows what playing under pressure means. And the former Warrior reveals how he classifies Bill Russell and Jerry West as clutch players and not Wilt.
“When it comes down to the closing minutes of a tough game, an important game, he doesn’t want the ball, he doesn’t want any part of the pressure. It is at these times that greatness is determined and Wilt doesn’t have it. There is no way you can compare him to a pro like a Bill Russell or a Jerry West…these are clutch competitors.”
While Rick Barry’s critique may be harsh, it isn’t untrue either. This wasn’t the first time, however, that Barry features in a narrative surrounding Wilt. The first time, it involved free throws.
How did Rick Barry’s underhand free throw routine feature in Chamberlain’s career?
Rick Barry was a scoring machine, and one of his most accurate weapons was the free throw. The Warriors superstar ended his NBA career having made free throws at a 90% clip over his career.
Barry was the most efficient free throw scorer in the league on 9 separate instances. The forward was clearly the envy of the league when it came to making free throws. What further stood out was the fact that Barry favored an underhand style over the conventional style of shooting free throws.
So, naturally, the outlier was pointed out as an option to a notoriously poor free throw shooter – Wilt Chamberlain. Chamberlain was a 51% shooter from the line and his free-throw shooting was often his undoing in big games. Naturally, there were suggestions to adopt the style of the best in the business, Rick Barry.
However, it remained as yet another failed experiment to correct Wilt’s form from the line. Chamberlain remained a poor free-throw shooter and the criticism was also ever-present.
