You Tube Gold: Nate Thurmond

Warriors center Nate Thurmond dunks a basketball Photo by Barney Peterson/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images In the 1966 season, the NBA had 10 teams: Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit.

Consider this: Philly had Wilt Chamberlain, Boston had Bill Russell, Cincinnati had Wayne Embry, New York had Willis Reed, St. Louis had Zelmo Beaty and the Warriors had Nate Thurmond.

In a few years, Wes Unseld and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would show up.

Big men didn’t get many nights off, in other words. In an era of greats, Nate Thurmond held his own.

Drafted by the Warriors in 1963, Thurmond was not as good as Russell or Chamberlain, but…