NBA training camps have opened and regular-season games are in sight. That means one thing… time to get your fantasy draft strategy going. Sometimes I wonder what for though—my teams are always crippled by late season injuries and evil team managers who sit my star players late to obtain higher draft positions.
If only Al Gore and I had been born just a bit earlier—in time for Al to invent the internet and, thus, fantasy sports leagues during the early days of the NBA–I could have done it, I could have been somebody, guaranteed.
It’s not just about Wilt’s scoring record of 100 points in a single game. This freak of a player, Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, averaged 50 points per game back in 61-62, 50 per game! He averaged 26 rebounds per game that year, 26 per game! I pick Chamberlain onto my team… I could slip quietly into a coma before the next round and I still win the big fantasy trophy at the end of the year and all the money and all of the glory. Let the auto-draft select dead people for me as I sit slumped and drooling in my chair in front of my 1960 Zenith computer monitor–I still win.
We fantasy hacks think that the 40 and 50 fantasy-point nights that LeBron and The Joker and Luka occasionally post are heaven, but they’re small potatoes compared to Chamberlain’s every-game output. Add it up: 50 points per game, 26 rebounds per game, they didn’t track block shots back then, but sport historians estimate about 7 per game for Wilt, let’s say his turnovers, assists, and steals are a wash just to be conservative, and you have an average of 104 fantasy points per game (ESPN default scoring, of course). That’s the average, 104 per night! He might go for 150 on a good night.
Record for most points in a game… fine, most rebounds in a game (55)… sure, Wilt did that too. Add another to Chamberlain’s list, The Stilt would have been the most prolific fantasy player of all time by a long shot, game over, I win, stencil my name onto our sad excuse for a revolving trophy. But then I’m sure my league Commish would have made a rule making Wilt ineligible for the draft that year… they do that sort of thing.