Top 100 NBA Players: #78

Walt Bellamy

(BBR: #83)

If you want to see a player whose career is filled with oddities, look no further than Walt Bellamy. To begin with, his best season was his first, in which he averaged 31.6 points and 19.0 rebounds while leading the league with a .519 field goal percentage. The scoring average was second to Wilt Chamberlain and the rebound average third to Wilt and Bill Russell. That season he won the only official award of his entire career, the Rookie of the Year.

Part of the reason that his stats were so strong early in his career was that nobody was playing defense back in the 1960's. In 1962, his rookie season, Bellamy's amazing season was barely even noticed, because it happened to be the same season that Oscar Robertson averaged a triple-double, and it was also the year that Wilt Chamberlain averaged over 50 points per game, including the record-setting 100-point game. It wasn't just Bellamy putting up crazy numbers that year, it was everybody.

Bellamy averaged at least 22 points and 14 rebounds per game in each of his first five seasons, yet was never named to an All-NBA Team. This is because he had the misfortune of playing at the same time as the two all-time greats I mentioned before, Russell and Wilt, so there was never room for the third-best center in the league.

Bellamy also holds the record for most games played in a season, with 88 games played in 1968-69. That was made possible by a midseason trade from New York to Detroit, who had a lot more games remaining on the schedule. With today's more balanced schedule, that record is unlikely to be broken. And it wasn't just that one season in which he was an iron man. Bellamy never missed more than one game in any of his first 11 seasons.

Bellamy also never made an appearance in the NBA Finals, at a time when the dominant centers seemed to be there every year. Walt Bellamy was a great player, but he was not the superstar that many expected, and he was never classified as a winner. For these reasons, Bellamy is the 30-point scorer most likely to be forgotten by the casual fan.

Bellamy was obviously a better player than Fulks, but Fulks had the winner's mentality and the mantle of league superstar. But what Bellamy lacked in winning, he made up for in durability and longevity. In the chart, you'll notice a second peak in the 11th year of his career. He is the only player I have profiled so far who was still effective enough to make a difference that late in his career, and that's why he deserves his place here at #78.