I respectfully disagree on much of this. You are flat out wrong on the "adapting" argument in terms of rebouding. Do some reasearch beyond just the single number you see...how many Wilt rebounded per game for a season...and see how many other players did similarly. Or look at rebounding rate. Or look at some of the other factors, such as pace and FG percentage. Just saying "see no one stopped him from getting 25 boards per game" is short-sighted and lazy. Apparently no one stopped Rodman from getting 18 per game either in the 90's. He must be a singular player out of time.
I am also certain Wilt would likely not score 100...however Kobe scored 80 in the modern era. So your assertion that is patently impossible is wrong. It is a factor of doing what works until it doesn't anymore.
Also, the same argument goes both ways. If you take Charles Barkley out of the modern system and drop him into drinking, smoking, eat whatever you want 1960 he would swell up like a balloon, would be 6'6" laying down too. The players that separated themselves as athletes at that time did so out of their own personal desire to be at the top of their game. That translates. Give Wilt modern training techniques when he had such immense natural strength and athleticism and it would have been scary. I think if you cookie cutter them out of their era into a different one it would take some adaptation from both ends. How far would Kobe get in an era when they could actually play defense. Let Detroit of the 80's knock him around some, see how much he scores. It is very tough to evaluate where this would all go in each era, moving players around. I think you cannot take these arguments ceteris paribus, it just doesn't work that way. And I think you are completely wrong saying that there was such a huge improvement in players. I would agree if you go back to the true beginnings, say the 40's, where it was still a white man's game (no offense) and, like baseball, suffered from a lack of diversity to push people to higher levels of performance. But from the late 50's forward (definitely mid 60's forward) I would argue that the greats would translate their game and be every bit as competitive.
