Yao Mings height is overrated

[SyRyanYang]

Not in basketball players. Tall disproportionately long armed people rise to the top and have a talent edge in that sport, and always have. Certain sports favor certain physical attributes, this is nothing new.

Do you even know what proportional means? NBA players have proportionally long arms but they are still proportional to their height.

[CavaliersFTW]

So shorter players generally have longer wingspan? lol your wilt stans are hilariously dumb

Basketball players that make it to pro or elite levels generally have longer wingspan.

You really think otherwise? What exactly are you arguing against?

[CavaliersFTW]

Do you even know what proportional means? NBA players have proportionally long arms but they are still proportional to their height.

An average person has an armspan roughly similar to their height. This varies of course from person to person, some of us have slightly longer, some slightly shorter.

Pro basketball players, by no coincidence, almost always have longer arms than their height. And it's usually what would be considered the extreme end of the spectrum compared to the general public. Their arm to height ratio is big, because it's usually a relevant part of their talent that helped them get to the top.

I don't know what you're arguing, are you thinking someone like me wasn't aware of this, and laughing at that assumption? Or are you suggesting it isn't true? What exactly are you getting angry about? I'm pretty sure you're just having a bad day there's nothing to argue here take a breather man. Nobody is saying anything ridiculous. Jongib was being sarcastic. Take it easy.

[clipps]

People forget or just plain ignorant to how strong Yao's lower body was. His legs were tree trunks, even in his rookie season before he put on some muscle. For such a tall guy, he had such a strong base and a low center of gravity. Even though some would say he looked like a string bean, no one except for MAYBE prime Shaq and prime Ben Wallace were able to push him around.

People make such a huge deal (rightfully so) about wing span and standing reach, why doesn't the NBA Draft combine measure leg strength. Leg strength is especially important when it comes to posting up and boxing out for rebounds.

[SyRyanYang]

An average person has an armspan roughly similar to their height. This varies of course from person to person, some of us have slightly longer, some slightly shorter.

Pro basketball players, by no coincidence, almost always have longer arms than their height. And it's usually what would be considered the extreme end of the spectrum compared to the general public. Their arm to height ratio is big, because it's usually a relevant part of their talent that helped them get to the top.

I don't know what you're arguing, are you thinking someone like me wasn't aware of this, and laughing at that assumption? Or are you suggesting it isn't true? What exactly are you getting angry about? I'm pretty sure you're just having a bad day there's nothing to argue here take a breather man. Nobody is saying anything ridiculous. Jongib was being sarcastic. Take it easy.

So what's the point of this thread exactly? Let's not pretend he didn't have an agenda.

[CavaliersFTW]

People forget or just plain ignorant to how strong Yao's lower body was. His legs were tree trunks, even in his rookie season before he put on some muscle. For such a tall guy, he had such a strong base and a low center of gravity. Even though some would say he looked like a string bean, no one except for MAYBE prime Shaq and prime Ben Wallace were able to push him around.

People make such a huge deal (rightfully so) about wing span and standing reach, why doesn't the NBA Draft combine measure leg strength. Leg strength is especially important when it comes to posting up and boxing out for rebounds.

They should have some sort of device that could measure post-up strength. Like how football players are asked to charge into a bag and push it back, how about something a player is asked to push backwards as deep as they can with their ass/back from a post-up spot. I'm sure some sort of equipment could be developed to measure that. They measure lane agility, sprint speed, leaping ability from both standing and stepping/running. Why not a post-up strength measurement? Not a bad idea.

[Dro]

I think Yao Ming and Gheorge Muresan are the only good players at 7'4" and above. NBA players who were 7'4" and above were stiffs, and didn't have a meaningful NBA Career.

Ralph Samson by the way is closer to 7'1". He's as tall as Rudy Gobbert.

Umm...Rik Smits is 7'4.

Manute Bol is 7'7.

Mark Eaton is 7/4

All had "meaningful NBA Careers".

[CavaliersFTW]

So what's the point of this thread exactly?

I don't know ask OP. I'm guessing it was to point out that while Yao was freakishly tall, other players that were a bit shorter had almost as much or more armspan/reach as he did. It's certainly a fair point wouldn't you say?

I personally don't think Yao's height is overrated because it makes him intimidating, and he did have a great standing reach and typical big NBA center armspan even if his armspan wasn't wasn't "relatively" long compared to his height. I don't see what's so bad about the thread.

[LAZERUSS]

Can someone here do the research, and tell us how many rpg titles Yao won?

[FireDavidKahn]

Whether it be someone blocking his shot, or just talking about it in general I don't get the height hype.

His wingspan is less than Wilt/Shaqs, and his standing reach isn't much longer... Considering he can't move nearly as fast, or jump as high I'm left

Chuck Taylor's still have about a 1 inch sole, dumbass

[AirFederer]

Killing lions is underrated.

Just ask Wilt and Walter Palmer.

[CavaliersFTW]

Chuck Taylor's still have about a 1 inch sole, dumbass

Have you owned a pair? Sandals have a thicker sole, Chuck's feel a lot like those minimalist shoes that are trending in the running world right now, or weightlifting shoes. There isn't much to them. I would give a new pair maybe half an inch, broken in they become more like 1/4.

[LAZERUSS]

Have you owned a pair? Sandals have a thicker sole, Chuck's feel a lot like those minimalist shoes that are trending in the running world right now, or weightlifting shoes. There isn't much to them. I would give a new pair maybe half an inch, broken in they become more like 1/4.

Probably the worst athletic shoes of all time, too.

[Locked_Up_Tonight]

And don't forget Shawn Bradley. Yes he got posterized a lot. That was because he went after EVERYTHING. But he had a very meaningful career as well.

Bradley became the fifth NBA player to record at least 20 points, 20 rebounds, and 10 blocks in a single game, and the first to do so off the bench.[18] The previous players to record a 20-20-10 game with points, rebounds, and blocks were Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elvin Hayes, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Shaquille O'Neal

His career was derailed by injuries and passion. He was more passionate about his faith than he was playing basketball. Had he cared more about basketball he could have been a much better player.

[Thorpesaurous]

Most athlete's in general have longer than average wingspan. It certainly helps tremendously with power in throwing anything. Longer arms, longer radius, bigger circumference, means more distance covered over the same time frame, and distance / time is velocity, which yields acceleration, which yields torque and power. So it just makes sense.

But there is some evidence that a shorter than usual span has some value in finer movements. Short armed baseball players can have a plate coverage because of quickness on the inside part of the plate. And slap hitting pain in the ass types that seem to get a piece of everything are like that too. Those guys who win driver competitions in golf often can't golf. They use longer clubs to get similar action to the longer wingspan, but on the whole can't keep things straight enough to play at a professional level. That long wingspan means that a slight error at the inside of the arc is going to make a bigger error on the outside of it. And those small errors can be huge factors at the pro level. There may be something to it with shooting a basketball too. But a lot of shooting teachers will try to limit the amount of moving pieces in a shot, effectively mitigating the long wingspan. But guys with long whippy shots, like Dirk, or Bird, you have to wonder how much natural hand eye coordination they had to make that work at the level they did with that much movement. And for what it's worth, Yao was a spectacular shooter for his size. Of course so was Pat Ewing, and he had huge wings, but he's a guy who worked his jumper into a very small motion.


I'm curious to see how the league views the next truly giant player. I know the league is getting smaller. And I know it's possible that guys at a certain size maybe just aren't designed to play an NBA season, it doesn't mean they wouldn't be great in a different format, shorter seasons, shorter games, more rest in between. But with the movement toward more regimented rest that the Spurs started, and we're seeing from other teams now too, I wonder if a team would be more inclined to try it. And more importantly to the value on the court, with teams really starting to tinker with zone concepts, and the seeming realization that defending PnR's soft is has some real merit, it's very possible that the defensive value of a guy like Yao, who was a much better defender than he's given credit for just by taking up space, could have an even bigger impact now than it did then. And he may have more advantage on the other end if teams are really going to design schemes where Draymond Green is going to play significant minutes at Center.