In this day and age when money (seems to be) the main key to happiness, do you think it would be wise for men and women of tallness (6’8" and taller) to seek each other out for the main purpose of breeding and raising boys to play the game of basketball?
What an easy path to fabulous riches!
Start by feeding him with a basketball-looking bottle … and once he’s able to stand on his feet, begin to teach him the techniques of the silly game itself, simple!
(In case you didn’t know it, some of those NBA guys – with their 18-foot wingspans – are actually signing $110-MILLION contracts for merely playing this dumb game for a few years! And that doesn’t include those gazillion-$$ shoe endorsements they get either!!)
And so I wonder … as a moral, philosophical, practical matter, would it be okay if super tall people started to smell the coffee by getting together and making it a point to have babies so as to one day, perhaps, collect on their offspring’s ability to basically stand by a basketball rim and drop the darn ball through it? I mean why not cash in on the insanity since no one’s being harmed, right?
Just because you’re kid is 7 feet tall doesn’t mean he’ll be any good at basketball. Despite the fact that you think it’s a “dumb” sport, it does require quite a bit of athletism.
I see no reason at all to believe this would work:
The vast, overwhelming majority of tall people cannot play basketball well. If it were enough to just be tall then the entire NBA would consist of the world’s 450 tallest men. It doesn’t, because that isn’t good enough.
In fact, many elite NBA players aren’t all that tall, and 6’8" is at least a an inch or two above the NBA average. The NBa claims an average height of about 6’7" and it’s well known that most NBA players’ listed heights are lies by at least an inch.
The results of deliberately marrying tall spouses to generate tall children are highly unpredictable; you may not necessarily get tall children at all, or you may come up with kids who are tall but have some other problem.
The drawbacks to deliberately marrying tall people instead of based on other issues of compatibility will likely outweigh the microscopic marginal likelihood of having a kids who’s tall AND a good basketball player AND will make the NBA AND will give you a lot of his money.
What’s “silly” about basketball? Ping pong is kind of silly. Dressage is a bit silly. Basketball’s too simple to be silly.
And if you’re deliberately setting out to make your kid HATE basketball, you’d push basketball on him.
I still say that the objective of basketball is to put the ball through the hoop. Nothing more. Therefore, a person 7’8" being fed a ball two steps away from the basket is going to be of much value to a team, as he merely has to lean towards the hoop and then drop it in. Simple.
Most folks in this country don’t choose mates with the goal of breeding rich athletes. They find each other by mutual attraction and love. Some athletes marry athletes, but it’s usually of secondary importance to them. We’re not breeding racehorses, here. Indiana’s high school Mr. Basketball and Miss Basketball will meet for the award dinner and photo shoot, but I’ve never heard of them pairing off afterward.
Any NBA star who hasn’t stupidly gotten married at a young age is going to marry some ridiculously hot Hollywood starlet, who will probably be of average height. See Rick Fox or Tony Parker for examples. These guys are multimillionaires, so why would they marry some super tall gal when they could have Vanessa Williams or Eva Longoria. Clearly, the athlete genes are passed on as witnessed by the huge number of second generation professional athletes, but if I was a lottery pick, I’d let my kids deal with the cards as they fall.
Tall guy checkin in here - 6’7’'. A couple of problems with this idea:
Many of the tall people you see walking around aren’t tall because they’re healthy. They’re tall as a side effect of Marfan’s Syndrome. This can effect people to a greater or lesser degree; according to my doctors I don’t have Marfan’s syndrome, but I do show a couple of characteristics. If I were to breed with a tall woman who also had one or two characteristics, they could become more pronounced and dominant. I’ve dated two women with Marfan’s, and known others. In my limited experience with the tall community (yes there is such a thing,) Marfan’s is pretty common - a lot more common than basketball prowess. Such a breeding program you envision would undoubtedly cause a lot more Marfan’s proliferation than NBA players.
Tall people are more suceptible to Deep Vein Thrombosis. Two of my immediate family members came down with DVT after taking long flights in coach. They both managed to get to the doctors office in time and are okay. They were lucky. My 6’9’’ friend from highschool died from DVT after a twelve hour bus ride.
Tall kids are expensive. They eat a lot, they grow through clothes even faster than normal kids, the clothes at the big and tall shops cost a lot more. You also can’t drive an inexpensive car to cart around your tall family - they’re too small. You’re going to need something with a lot of legroom and headroom for all passengers. Pursuant to the last point, they probably will need first class tickets on any long plane trips you take if you don’t want them to die from DVT.
Tall people who are athletic can have health problems at a much higher rate than your average person. My father was a runner for years, now he can barely walk because his feet are so messed up. Those feet have born the stress of carrying a 260 pound man jogging for years, same with his knees. I’m a distance runner, but I’m in physical therapy from my back being screwed up as a result. I was warned ahead of time that distance running is a bad idea for tall guys. Back problems for tall people are extremely common.
In my experience, a lot of tall people are sick of:
- Being asked about playing basketball
- The automatic expectation that they’re automatically good at basketball
- The automatic assumption that they love basketball.
Guess what? A lot of us hate basketball. We don’t want to be asked about it, we don’t want to play it. Please stop perpetuating the sterotype.
In short, what you’re talking about is an extremely expensive proposition, probably wouldn’t work as well as breeding normal people who like basketball a lot.
At 6’5", I get this quite abit. I imagine it’s worse for you. I guess I’ve just gotten used to it. What gets me is all the Cpt Obviouses out there that like to point out to me that I am tall (I already noticed, but thank for the “wow, you’re tall comment”).
On the inbound, how is he going to get back on D? He’ll be out of position so fast it’d make your head spin. Easy basket for the opposing side. Advantage: canceled.
Plus, tall people (generally speaking) are pretty spindly compared to their shorter brethren. Over an NBA season, getting banged around, they’ll pay for it.
I think your question requires more thought than you’ve put into it.
Playing basketball has very little to do with being tall. There is a definite skillset associated with the game and more strategy than you think.
My game plan would be to not have him get involved with defense, just hangout near the basket.
I hope my question didn’t offend anyone, it was as much of a way to let off some steam about pro athletes getting Fort Knox type of money for their rather lame contributions to the Human Condition, as it was to legitimately explore the ethics of people pursuing that sort of ambition in the way I described. Though I certainly don’t begrudge people for accepting what others will pay them.
Not to mention all the recurrent head trauma from walking into low doorways.
My uncle is a contractor, and one of the architects he works with is somewhere North of 6’6". So is his wife and, more disconcertingly, twelve year old daughter. He got so sick of stooping to get around in normal sized houses that he built his own place to his family’s scale. All the doorways are at least seven feet tall.
A player who helps his team lose every game isn’t going to be highly sought after in the NBA. That’s what would happen if he didn’t get involved in defense, as a team with a 5 on 4 advantage isn’t going to lose many, if any, games.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to have a normal sized kid and get him an MBA? There are far far more millionaires that have gone that route than there are NBA players.
ETA: I somehow missed Epimetheus’ post, which states basically the same thing.
Hmm. Thanks for the invite, but my vistor pass expires in a few hours and I’m not sure I have enough clams in the bank to afford it. I’ll have to carefully do the math and see.
And no, I don’t play basketball. Do you play miniature golf?
I’m a past president of a chapter of Tall Clubs International. The group does wonderful work in funding the abovementioned Marfan’s Syndrome research, and is a great place to meet other tall people.
For many years I exclusively dated tall women ranging in height from 5’ 10" to 6’ 5". How I ended up married to a 5’ 2" girl is anyone’s guess…
