As hard as this is on a Celtics site, I don't think you can make a really reasonable argument that Bill should be ahead of Kareem. In fact, I think you have an easier time arguing Kareem is the greatest player ever then you would arguing that Bill was better than Kareem.
How do you account for a guy who, in a period of 15 years, won two NCAA championships, 11 NBA championships, and a gold medal? With all of those coming with him as the most impactful player? And hell, if Russell doesn't get hurt in the '58 Finals, the Celts are probably winning that title, too.
I wish we had advanced stats and tracking data related to Russell's era, so that we could track how many shots he blocked, and how many he altered.
There's a non-zero chance that even with his vastly inferior offense, Russell's overall game was better than Kareem's.
Russell was great, but he also was playing on teams with way more HOFers than his competition, including his college team. Kareem went to 10 Finals winning 6. It isn't like he didn't have team success. He is the all time leading regular season scorer (at least for another year). He has more MVP's, more win shares, and more of just about everything. And while Bill was a better defender, it isn't like Kareem wasn't a great defender. I mean he is 3rd all time in defensive win shares (Bill is 1 and Duncan is 2). It is easier to argue that Kareem is the greatest player ever than it is to argue that Bill was a better player than him. A lot of people don't even have Bill as the greatest player of his generation (i.e. Wilt). Bill for as great as he was, is not a better player than Kareem.
Of course, a lot of those guys aren't Hall of Famers if they don't play next to Russell and win several championships. Is K.C. Jones (the guy on his college team) a HOFer independently? Zero-time all-star, 7.4 points and 4.3 assists?
I assume that Cousy, Sam Jones, Havlicek and Tommy make it in if they never played with Russell. Everybody else is suspect. Satch Sanders, Frank Ramsey? I don't see it. So, four non-suspect Hall of Famers on varying time lines. That's not really much different than who Wilt or Kareem played with.
Of course it is. Wilt had just 3 other HOFers on his team only a couple of seasons, and even then they weren't entirely healthy some of those seasons. Basically, the one time Wilt had a near equal number of HOFers on this team with health, they put together the greatest season the sport had ever seen to that point, and absolutely throttled the Celtics in a gentlemen's sweep in which Wilt dominated Bill (and to be clear Greer, Walker, and Cunningham were not equivalent to Jones, Hondo, Howell, and Jones - let alone the supporting guys like Embry, Siegfried, and Sanders). Bill was great, but he was also on a team of great players with the greatest GM in the sports history.
Wilt always had good talent around him. Wilt had three HOF players on his team in 1960, 1961, 1962, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971, and 1972. Wilt had two HOF players on his team in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1969, 1973. IOW, every team Wilt ever played on had at least 3 HOFers. Wilt played with six members of the Top 50 at 50 compared to four for Russell.
Wilt won only 1 title during Russell's career, and his team choked away a 3-1 lead the following year against the Cs with much the same team he had in 1967. This fiasco resulted in Wilt being traded for chump change. Wilt's Lakers then blew a 2-0 and a 3-2 lead in 1969 against a Celtics team that finished 4th in the East in Russell's and Sam Jones' last year. I consider this to be the biggest Finals upset of all time. Finally, Wilt was 10-11 in elimination games and 4-5 in game 7s compared to Russell's 16-2 and 7-0.
As for 1966-67, Cunningham and Greer are top 75 all-time, just like Hondo and Sam Jones and HOFer Chet Walker had a higher BB-reference HOF probability score than HOFer Bailey Howell. The Sixers also had Larry Costello, Luke Jackson, and Bill Melchionni, who collectively went to 4 more ASGs than Embry, Siegfried, Howell, and KC Jones. Bill Simmons claims that Russell had only a one-season edge in talent over Wilt and that from 1966-1969 Wilt's teams were better. I can't make a good argument against that assessment, even allowing for Simmons' bias.
Lastly, of all the franchise players I've seen in close to 60 years of viewing the Cs and the NBA, I've never seen a bigger stats hound than Wilt nor a better defensive player than Russell. Both were physical freaks, and I don't doubt they would dominate today, but Wilt padded his stats in wins and losses after the games were effectively over and sought to have a 100 point game and to lead the NBA in assists.
