Re:OT: What would Wilt be able to do in today's NB
I'm not arguing on pure athleticism though. I'm arguing that every sport that is objectively measurable (eg athletics, swimming, cycling) has shown that despite the low hanging fruit being picked, they've continued to improve to this day. There's no reason to think that just because we can't objectively measure improvement in team sports like basketball that the same isn't true.
I mean pick whatever you like, if you look back to 15-20 years ago (ie MJs prime) practically the only records still standing are the ones almost certainly doping tainted (eg womens 100m sprinting). To pick one event that comes to my mind because it's so widely hyped in Australia, 20 years ago one man in history had broken 15 minutes in the 1500m freestyle. In the 2008 Olympics, 7 people did it in the one race.
If athletes in all these other sports are better, I find it pretty hard to believe that LeBron (or whoever you want to consider to be the best player today) isn't a better basketball player than MJ was. MJ is Carl Lewis to LeBron's Usain Bolt.
The margin the athletes are better is extraordinarily small. What's the gap in the average qualifying sprinting times between now and 20 years ago? I doubt it's even greater than 1%. Many of the other sports have gaps in records due to massive improvement of the equipment rather than improvements of the athletes as well.
I would guess that there is a logarithmic curve to improvement in the sport where at the beginning the improvements are very sharp and then steady off into extraordinarily small rise over time, where major outliers in ability from the curve could still be quite a bit ahead of outliers further up the curve.
Jordan's athleticism, as I mentioned from his 4.3 40 yard dash sprint time and his 48 inch vertical would make him the greatest athlete in the NBA today by a pretty good margin. No one in the past 9 years on the DX database has come close to his vertical. The highest measure is 45.5 max vert, 2.5 inches below Jordan.
If you then agree, that Jordan is still the most elite athlete in the NBA, or at the very least within the top 1%, then you'd have to say that there are other athletes who are more skilled than Jordan in order to say someone who has surpassed him. Who would you wager is more skilled? LeBron certainly doesn't show it, neither does Kobe. LeBron is only successful when he drives, Kobe shoots a much lower percentage than Jordan ever did.
The lack of hand checking rules and wussy fouls in this era also mean that the defenses Jordan had to face were far more difficult and physical than what scorers go up against today.
The sheer magnitude of what he achieved still easily makes him the greatest player in the history of the league. Maybe if we fast forward 30 years, and the elite athlete in the NBA is running 4.1 40s and leaping 50 inches then we can discuss whether that guy would have been better than Jordan, because of the athletic advantage. However, you'd have to show how his skills compare too.
Right now, I don't think you could find evidence of anyone more athletic or more skilled than Jordan.
