Ranking the 30 best NBA seasons from players over 35 years old
Wilt Chamberlain. 9. player. 20. . C. Los Angeles Lakers
The 30 best NBA seasons from players over 35 years old — 9. Wilt Chamberlain, 1972-73 (36)
Wilt Chamberlain was a physical marvel, a 7-1 athlete the likes of which the world has rarely seen. No player can match the prolific nature of his career numbers, capped by the 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds per game he averaged in 1961-62, his third in the league.
Fast forward a decade, and Chamberlain was still dominating inside even at the age of 36. Playing 43.2 minutes per game, he put up 13.2 points and 18.6 rebounds, the latter tops in the league. He was also deadly accurate from the inside, leading the league in field goal percentage for the ninth time in his career.
The Los Angeles Lakers finished with 60 wins, tied with the Milwaukee Bucks for the best in the Western Conference (for modern NBA fans, Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit all played in the West while Houston was in the East. It was a wild time). Chamberlain vied with his future replacement on the Lakers, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who lead the league in win shares. Chamberlain finished second with 18.2 win shares, the 34th-highest single season mark in league history, but just the eighth-highest total in his career.
Chamberlain and the Lakers fought their way through a tough playoff field, winning in seven over the Chicago Bulls and then in five over the Golden State Warriors. The NBA Finals, a rematch of the year before, saw a balanced New York Knicks team take down an again Lakers group in five games. Even at 36 with declining athleticism, Chamberlain was the leading rebounder in all five games.
Chamberlain would not end up playing another minute in the NBA. For a career marred by playoff disappointment, he could not go out on top like his Boston counterpart Bill Russell. Even so, his mark on NBA history – and its record books – is unquestionable, and he was still schooling opponents at the age of 36.