Anthony Davis Let Me Measure You, Coward
Pictured: Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis looking down at the roof of a two-story building, just out of frame credits: Zhong Zhi | source: [object Object] So there’s this thing:
And this thing:
NBA player heights have been a matter of mild controversy and wild speculation for years. One thing everybody has just sort of generally understood, for a long time, is that the officially listed heights are a bunch of bullshit—that they’ve been subject to such stuff as “Kevin Durant not wanting to be seven feet tall, even though he is.” Now they are saying that these are the verified heights. These are the heights you can trust. Well la-di-frickin’-da, wouldn’t you know it, they are also saying that Kevin Durant is not seven feet tall.
Well I am saying: Bullshit! How do I know that I can trust these heights more than the old ones? I did not see these heights being measured. All I have is somebody’s insistence that these heights are good. And furthermore these heights are extremely suspect. Imagine someone trying to tell you with a straight face that Joel Embiid, a cartoonish giant who towers over normal NBA players, is six feet and 11.75 inches tall. If Joel Embiid is a quarter-inch short of seven feet, then this purportedly 7-foot-3.25-inch “Christ Koumadje” guy’s head had better be poking out through a hole in the roof of the arena next time I see him. Imagine someone telling you with a straight face that Kevin Durant is only and exactly one inch taller than LeBron James. Nonsense. Malarkey. Please take these heights and deposit them in the dumpster.
The height listings I will trust are the ones I can witness being measured, with my own eyes. No! Actually to hell with that! How do I know that the height-measuring apparatus is not fraudulent, a fixed and lying apparatus, one with extra-large inches on it for the purposes of making Kevin Durant appear to be the baloney height of 6-9.5? I do not know that at all. How can I know?
I will believe the height measurements of NBA players when I can measure them myself, with my own trusty tape-measure that I know has not been futzed with by agents of the league. And if it says that Anthony Davis is even one thousandth of an inch shorter than seven feet tall, all that will mean is that the Imperial measurement system is all screwed up and must be recalibrated.