How many people are actually 7 feet tall?

NO SUCH THING

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Society & Culture, Comedy, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There’s a wild stat that’s floated around basketball circles for a long time: A 7-foot (or taller) American man has a 17% likelihood of being an NBA player. Are there hundreds of Victor Wembanyamas and Yao Mings walking among us? This week, we try to find out if this statistic holds true, and along the way we learn how extremely rare it is to be so tall, why the number of seven-footers in the league saw a dip, and… the case for socialized medicine?

Our guests this week are Barry Bogin, Björn Quanjer, Guillaume Lettre, Stereogum’s Tom Breihan, and The F5’s Owen Phillips.

Check out Owen’s basketball newsletter, The F5: https://thef5.substack.com/

Tom Breihan, “On Being a Giant” & his book: The Number Ones

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Have a question you want us to tackle? Email us: mannynoahdevan@gmail.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Annie. I'm Noah.
0:01.5	This is Devin.
0:02.2	And this is No Such Thing, the show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research.
0:08.1	This week, maybe we don't appreciate seven-footers enough.
0:11.8	And also, the case for universal health care? I'll explain.
0:17.5	There's no such thing.
0:19.4	No such thing. No such thing.
0:22.4	No such thing.
0:25.2	No such thing.
0:29.0	No such thing.
0:32.9	So we're in the midst of NBA Finals, boys.
0:36.0	That's right.
0:36.6	Who's playing again?
0:54.2	The Indiana Pacers. Okay. Who I will die for. Damn. All right. No one's ever said that. Yeah. Or in history. Just, you know, I've got 20 bucks on the line. And Oklahoma City Thunder. Okay. We're heavily favored. Until, well, we'll see.
0:58.1	There's a stat that's floated around in basketball circles.
1:01.5	First in a 2011 Sports Illustrated article by Pablo Torre.
1:04.7	And it also appears in David Epstein's book, The Sports Gene.
1:14.8	The stat says that an American man between age 20 and 40, who is seven feet tall or more more has a 17% probability of being in the NBA 17% yeah oh my god thoughts on that that's huge that's crazy to me that you're in not even like
1:24.3	it's not like you could be it's not that you're playing basketball at a high level, that you, a 17% chance of being in the NBA by just your height. No other attributes about you. You can be, you know, we're not saying athletic people who are playing basketball who are seven feet tall. Just like seven feet tall period. 17%. That's kind of my takeaway. It's like, all right, yeah, no athletic ability necessarily. You're just tall and you can just walk in there essentially if you want. But then, you know, I thought about it, it's like, I don't know if I've ever even met a seven foot person. Like who's the tallest person you know? Oh, that's a really good question. Because then I was going through, I'm thinking of people, I'm like, okay, this person's brother, this guy. Like people who I know as being, like, their main attribute in my mind is being tall. And then I'm like, yeah, they're probably six five. Yeah. Which is really tall, but not even close to seven. Yeah, I definitely don't know any seven footers.
2:19.9	I think probably the tallest person I know would be probably six, four, six, five.
2:24.9	It is such an insane height when you think about it.
2:28.5	I have a photo of myself next to LeBron James.
	...

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