Was Wilt Chamberlain robbed of an MVP award in the 1961-62 NBA season?

"MyKill" .....what more can you expect from one player????

The guy AVERAGED over 50 ppg AND almost 26 rpg, plus most likely led the league in blocked shots ....all while playing 48.5 minutes per game!!!!!

The reason why the players/coaches didn't give it to Wilt was because of his size (remember, nobody roots for Goliath). He was expected to put up huge numbers, despite the league allowing just about every illegal tactic to be used against him.

I agree with you in that the MVP should be awarded to the player who means the most to his team's success, but if you take Wilt off the Warriors, they don't come close to winning 49 games and going to the ECF.

Take Russell off the Celtics and they quite possibly could still win 50 games (although not a title). Wilt meant every bit as much to Philly as Russell did to the Celtics. The Celtics just usually had the better team.

And were it not for a controversial goaltending call against Wilt, plus a last second miracle by Sam Jones, it would have been Philly winning the title instead of Boston.

So yes, there's no question that Wilt was robbed of the MVP in 1962. Nobody before or since had as great a year as that one.

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This is exactly one of the problems with the 'MVP' award ......there's really no consistant criteria in determining who deserves the award. We can only speculate on what each team would have done without these 2 great players.

Although I agree with you that Russell was the driving force behind the Celtic dynasty, I simply cannot give one good reason why he deserved the MVP more than Wilt that season.

Wilt put up numbers that were just ridiculous that year, and I'm not even talking about the 100 point game ( first & only player to score 4,000 points, second 2,000 rebound season, 55 rebounds in one game, against Russell coincidentally).

Head to head, Wilt almost always outplayed Russell, although the Celtics usually won. But TEAMS win and lose games, not players. And the Celtics were loaded with HOFers, and man for man, the better team than Philly.

Wilt was the main reason for the Warriors coming within 3 seconds of dethroning the Celtics, and he deserves the MVP.

That just goes to show that stats is not the most important factor in determining how great a player is. It is important of course, but it's not the single biggest factor.

Russell led his team to the best regular season record that year (and eventually the championship), had very good stats (19 pts and 24 rbs per game) and was a defensive demon. Wilt was able to do that too but the criticism was that Wilt purposely tried to pad his stats while Russell's stats was earned while helping his team to victories.

The NBA players and coaches were the ones who voted for the regular season MVP.

The sportswriters are the ones who voted for the All Team Selection.

The NBA players and coaches were more impressed with Russell leading the Celtics to the first 60 win season in NBA history (out of 80 games).

The sportswriters were more impressed with Chamberlain's stats.

Russell more often than not has been relegated to the Second Team even though he was the MVP. Even in 1958 prior to Wilt's entry into the League and during his first MVP year, Russell was beaten out by Dolph Schayes for All First Team spot. The reasoning was while there were players with better stats, none of them meant more to the team than Bill Russell.

Remember the MVP is given to the player who has done the most for the betterment of his team not to the player with the most dominating stats.

Russell's Celtics were 11 games ahead of Wilt's Philadelphia Warriors and 6 games ahead of West and Baylor's LA.

Russell's Celtics eliminated Wilt's Warriors in the Playoffs enroute to their 4th straight ring.

The fact that it became known that the Warrior's halfcourt set devised by Frank McGuire ALWAYS revolve around Wilt getting the shot (and thus getting those insane scoring numbers) which is true btw, certainly did not help Wilt in the MVP voting.

Edit:

King if youre referring to the '75-76 season, you could blame Kareem's and the Lakers post season absence on the crazy Playoff format. LA (40-42) has the better win loss column than Milwaukee (38-44) and Detroit (36-46) but the latter two instead went to the Playoff because theyre from the Midwest division. IIRC, the format during this time was that the top two teams from each divisions plus the 3rd ranking team with the highest win-loss average goes to the Playoffs. The Lakers were sadly just fourth in a STACKED Pacific division. Seriously, the bottomfeeding Trail Blazers (37-45) in the Pacific were just ONE game behind Milwaukee, the top team in the Midwest.

Anyway, the Lakers were sorely undermanned during this time due to the Kareem trade. KAJ understood this and doubled his efforts to justify LA's acquisition of him. His efforts did not go unnoticed which is why he got the MVP.

Edit:

But Hoop, Wilt already won an MVP prior to '62 during his rookie year in '59-60 when he lead the Warriors to (49-26), a huge 17 game improvement from the year before. The players and coaches certainly recognized him for it. They were certainly rooting for Goliath back then.

Nope, i dont think the NBA coaches and players have a bias against Wilt or at least not more so than they have for other MVP contenders. Take Bill Russell for example. Russell is the leader of the most physical and most hated team in the League. To put things in a more modern perspective, could you imagine Jordan, Barkley, Malone, Magic and the rest of the '80s NBA voting Bad Boys Piston's leader Isaiah Thomas for MVP?

Plus, the refs are the ones that i know of who allowed every illegal tactic to be used against Wilt.

Also, if you take Russell out of the Celtics, most likely the team would fall to sub .500. Keep in mind that the Celtics during 1961-62 season have no backup center for Russell. When Russell took himself out of the lineup for 4 games in Jan '62, the Celtics lost 4 straight, twice to Wilt's Warriors. Even if they did have a backup center, i seriously doubt that the Celtics would have reached 50 wins. The Celtics even had trouble winning 40 games even though they have Red, Cousy, Sharman, Ramsey, and a HoF at center, Ed Macauley.

Also, while it was Sam Jones' miracle shot that gave the Celtics the lead with just 3sec. to play, it was Russell who deflected the inbound pass to Wilt to clinch the '62 ECF Game 7 win. Winners create their own luck.

Wilt didn't win MVP b/c his PEERS (not the media) chose not to give it to him.

Lmfao at all you inner city obsessed with points & razzle dazzle bullshit RETARDS who know NOTHING about basketball.

Yayyy he put up lots of cute little points. GUESS WHAT? He had multiple HOF's on HIS team too idiots, and that team only won 3 more games (1 more loss) than the previous year.

GUESS WHAT #2? The FOLLOWING year, his team SELF DESTRUCTED, and Wilt STILL put up 45 and 24 that year, pretty damn close to the previous year huh? Wanna know why they sucked so bad?

PAUL ARIZIN...noted HOF had retired before 62-63. Wilt's stats like Jordan's are always overstated BIG TIME b/c they didn't contribute NEARLY enough to wins as much as you'd like to think. They were selfish ballhog tards who were obsessed with stats rather than wins.

Kinda like most inner city tards these days who like to play like 42% shooting Derrick Rose rather than 52% shooting Steve Nash.

1962 Nba Mvp

why bring up this question now. Where is this coming from. i don't know enough about bill russell's season but i do know that no player in history has come close avging 50 a game and no one has ever reached triple digits in a game. So, since the season is so historical yeah, he probably should have.

Yep

Note: Wilt made the All-NBA 1st Team while Russell was on the All-NBA 2nd team. How silly is that? Russell was MVP but Wilt beat him out to be on the 1st team....and far as team records? Well they didn't make a big deal about that back then. Hence why Kareem won MVP without making the playoffs (Kareem came after Russell).

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LMFAO @ what Steve Nash Fan For Life said.

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Mykill, why did Kareem get a MVP without making the postseason if they were impressed with team records back then?

yes

were you born during the great depression or something.??

The dude was decades ago. forget him