Could you imagine Filler/Gorst/Carlo/SVB/etc playing on those old bucket tables? The packs they'd put together would be insane.
Adding to Jazznpool's excellent reply to your post, this type of thinking just doesn't work. Yes, give a Filler or a Shane bucket pockets, Simonis cloth, rails and balls with today's quality, jump cues, screw-on extensions, and the better pool tables in use today and they would run a whole lot of racks, but that's not a meaningful comparison across generations.
Today's players play with better tables that have better rails and better ball sets. They all have jump cues. They have screw-on cue extensions that ensure that the bridge need nearly ever be used. Fifty years ago, most players did not even have break cues, never mind jump cues. They played on slow, nappy cloth and some of the positional shots that look routine today were almost impossible back in the day. If you had to play a power-stun shot off a five-degree angle, you had to have huge power to make it happen. Need a long draw off a long shot? Only the best could do it back in the pre-Simonis days. One reason that Strickland and Sigel were the two best 9ball players forty-five years ago, shortly before the switch to Simonis, was that both had an extremely powerful stroke. It's so easily forgotten.
There is little doubt in my mind that, even on the equipment and conditions of yesteryear, a Filler or a Shane would have played at a higher level than their counterparts of fifty years ago, but by less than one might guess.
