Confession
I am a liar.
If you are still reading after that last sentence- thank you. I appreciate the chance to come clean and explain myself. Maybe calling myself a liar is a bit harsh, I did not lie intentionally, I just have been mistaken for all of my adult life.
You see, at some point in my teenage years, someone had me stand by a wall. After marking the wall they measured from the floor to the mark. They told me I was 5’ 10” tall. So that’s what I’ve told people. My driver’s license even says it.
Whoever it was that measured me was either incompetent or just didn’t feel that precision was critical. The other day, I stood against a wall, shoeless (and penniless), while my wife took a level, set it on my head and pressed the end nearest the wall against a tape measure. When the bubble was centered, the result was spoken, “Sixty-nine inches.”
69”?! For those who either skipped math class or use units of measure that are actually logical, 69” equates to 5’ 9” tall. In other words, I am a full inch shorter than I believed I was my entire adult life.
Reconciliation
With my ego shattered (I’m below average height for an adult male in the United States!?), I fought to regain my pride. I donned one of the two pairs of basketball shoes I own- the “Giannis Immortality 3s”.
I stood up against the wall a second time. “Seventy inches”, my wife said. I was back again. So long as I kept the “Giannis Immortality 3s” on my feet I could once again look the average height American male in the eyes without fear.
I will now be wearing those shoes from dusk to dawn. They are no longer basketball shoes but “lifestyle shoes”, “work boots”, “slippers”, and even “toe warmers” so that I can justify wearing them as I lay down to bed each night.
The NCAA Racket
I am not the only one that has lied about their height. It seems like every single NCAA D1 team does too.
Three weeks ago was the NBA draft combine. Players who hope to achieve their childhood dreams and play in the NBA gathered together. In the process their height, weight, wingspan, hand size, and standing reach were all measured.
As I looked over the measurements I was shocked to see an outlier in the height listings- 5’ 10.25” Mark Sears. Mark Sears notably lead this year’s Alabama men’s basketball team to a final four appearance.
That feat is impressive enough, but doing that and being 5’ 10” tall is even more uncommon. The problem is, Alabama’s roster lists him at 6’ 1” tall. That is still noticeably short for a high level basketball player, but 3”? Has Mark been wearing platform shoes to his games?
I compared the heights of every player at this year’s NBA combine to their college roster height. You can see that graphic below.
It looks like our top 5 “Honest Abes” were:
5- Donovan Clingan at UCONN (Listed 0.25” taller on college roster than measured at the NBA combine),
4- Zach Edey at Purdue (Listed 0.25” taller on college roster than measured at the NBA combine),
3- Jesse Edwards at West Virginia (Listed 0.5” shorter on college roster than measured at the NBA combine),
2- Enrique Freeman at Akron (0.25” shorter on college roster than measured at the NBA combine),
1- Quentin Post at Boston College (listed the same height on college roster as measured at the NBA combine)
All of these players are taller than 6’ 7”. Three of the players are 7’ tall or taller. It looks like the numbers show that you consistently give more height to a shorter player. I reorganized the data to see if any correlation existed between their listed college height and measured height at the combine:
The relationship here wasn’t really strong- the correlation is 0.27169, but there certainly seems to be a relationship. I really want to dive more into this and look at past NBA combines. Having a disappointing measurement at the combine can have serious implications for a player’s potential draft positioning.
While this result wasn’t entirely surprising- my teammates from high school always knew our roster would make our team seem taller than we were- it does raise a number of questions. What is the purpose? Why do teams continue to do this? Does it really matter?
It Must be the Shoes
Now, it is very possible that the colleges just listed their height with shoes. I adjusted for this, and the numbers looked much better, there was much less discrepancy. Even with a 1.5” adjustment (which is quite the shoe), Mark Sears is still 1 1/4” taller on his college roster than he measured at the NBA combine.
Maybe Mark just had some elevator shoes on. I decided to do some digging and found a list of the best basketball shoes for increasing height:
UA ClutchFit Drive 3
Nike Lebron 17
Nike Lebron 19
Nike KD 14
Air Jordan 34
Air Jordan 36
Nike Zoom Rize
Nike Air Zoom GT Jump
While I couldn’t find any specifics about how much height these shoes ACTUALLY add, what I could find indicated that they add about 1.5”. But did Mark Sears even wear these shoes?
The Case of Mark Sears
None of those seem to be what Mark Sears wears. I looked at several pictures of him, and it appeared that his shoe of choice at Alabama was usually the Lebron 20.
So did Alabama lie to us? Are all NCAA teams lying to us? Mark has announced he will be returning to Alabama for another year of school. I’m interested to see what his height is on next year’s roster…
Training Update
I have been slow on getting this update out. It has been over three weeks, and I know all of you have been on pins and needles waiting to find out if I threw down my first dunk! The answer is- NO. If that’s all you cared about you can successfully close the newsletter now, but do so at your own peril (I am told it’s bad luck to not finish reading my newsletter, seven years bad luck or something like that).
I did hit some milestones- first I am jumping really high and grabbing the rim easily. I have been trying to jump high enough to get my wrist on the rim. Second, I touched the rim with both hands for the first time! Unfortunately the gym was crowded so I didn’t get a video of the two-hand touch, but I will get one done soon.
My shins and shoulders are improving. I got better inserts for my shoes and that seems to be helping my shins. I am starting to notice some knee pain as of this past Saturday though…that’s something I am going to have to be very mindful of.
You can see a couple of my jumps from the past two weeks below:
Happy jumping everyone!