[CapmCrackaWaka]

I don't think that this is the conclusion I would come to. Height is not something that can be changed, therefore it cannot be used as an adjustable variable to make that market efficient. You can't train to be taller like you can train at coding competitions.

I would say that height is an advantage up to a certain point in basketball, but tall people are not especially rare. Within the market of basketball players, you can find tall people who also have other skills, sometimes you find short people (Steph Curry) who have exceptional skills.

[jaredtn]

Steph Curry is 6'3", in the 98th percentile for height. Wouldn't quite call him short. And there are only ~2,800 7-footers in the world, many of which are in the NBA. So tall players - meaning over 7 feet - are extremely rare.

[CapmCrackaWaka]

Yes I meant short relative to NBA players.

[dasil003]

Also, Steph Curry is not really short, he just looks that way next to NBA centers and forwards, but he's actually 96th percentile in height amount American men.

A better example would be Muggsy Bogues who was a full 12" shorter than Steph Curry and he could dunk.

[bsanr2]

Muggsy re:the NBA has always stood out to me as an example of the failure of a supposedly efficient market due to a massive but unintuitive oversight. It would be one thing if he had just been a middling player, but even with the MASSIVE height disparity between him and the rest of the league, he proved to be a standout player, easily in the top 50% of players historically, and probably much higher. Clearly, there's a role for short men even at the upper echelons of the sport - not just as a curiosity, but as an effective value-add above an average replacement, in part because of his lack of stature. But you almost never see NBA players below 5'9". The players are tall. The coaches are tall. Surely being tall is generally necessary for success in the sport? But then, Muggsy.

Read between the lines. If all the players are tall, and all the coaches are tall, and the game has been played for more than a half century with that assumption... who knows how to train/coach a short player?

[jacobolus]

He also could jump almost a foot and a half higher off the ground than the average NBA player, who in turn can jump almost a foot higher than the average man of the same age.

What proportion of people out there can learn to jump so high, even with extensive training/practice?

[bsanr2]

Hard to know, considering that said extensive training/practice is not as well-known as other basketball-related training, and that the practice of fielding players who would benefit from it is discouraged.

That said, a quick search of "training to dunk 5'6"" on Youtube brings up a number of videos.

[CapmCrackaWaka]

I was comparing his height to his peers in the NBA.