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Basketball is pretty unique, in that essentially relies on abnormally tall people. When you put that as a requirement in front of the many others you need to be
by Aelinsaar 10y ago
Basketball is pretty unique, in that essentially relies on abnormally tall people. When you put that as a requirement in front of the many others you need to be successful in the NBA, it becomes clear why the field is so thin.
You see a few other places with similar fields though, like the absolute bleeding edge of traditional ballet, or some gymnastic events.
- wldcordeiro 10y agoThe classic case I always hear is jockeys too. It's not that odd, every sport is getting very specialized in athlete selection, in fact there's a great TED by David Epstein[0] talk about this kind of thing. [0] https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_...
- mitchty 10y agoGymnasts as well have similar size limitations in some cases. I know my one friend growing up was pretty much devastated when she grew to 5'8" (~170cm if my head conversion is close) She said that being too tall made the balance beam harder as you had more chance to hit your head. I think been a while so anyone can correct me.
- WalterBright 10y agoThe taller you are, the much much harder it gets to rotate the body end over end.
- wldcordeiro 10y agoI'm not even that tall and I learned that growing up, learning just how to do a front flip on a trampoline was tough being a "lerpy" kid.
- xxs 10y agoMore like 172... another issue are the longer limbs that require more strenght to balance the body
- jessaustin 10y agoJockeys are an interesting example, because women compete successfully alongside men, at very high levels. In that sense horse racing is among the least sexist of professional sports.
- thrownblown 10y agoBritish Olympic medal winning cyclist Victoria Pendelton is now competing as a jockey. At London 2012's Olympics she set a world record in the Team Sprint, got silver in the Match Sprint and gold in Keirin. The irony here is that Olympic Keirin is derived from a Japanese/Korean betting sport, which is basically horse racing. But with people.