| ▲ | beambot 18 hours ago |
| Definitely uncommon, but not unprecedented: Hakeem Olajuwon - didn't start basketball until 15 or 16. Kurt Warner - undrafted, returned to NFL at 28. Francis Ngannou - started MMA at 26. |
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| ▲ | kevinmchugh 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Dennis Rodman grew up overshadowed by his sisters' basketball skills, and then had some unheard of growth spurt of 8" after finishing high school. He hadn't even played much high school ball. |
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| ▲ | harry8 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Both Dennis Rodman and Hakeem Olajuwon are not 5ft, they are very tall and athletic. That combination is more important than basketball skill attained at 18 years of age. These attributes differs from tennis, or chess. Being elite at being both tall and athletic probably changes the most over puberty? |
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| ▲ | presentation 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Basketball is probably not a great example since just being enormous gives you a huge chance of making it to the NBA, which I guess is just another form of being a prodigy. |
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| ▲ | gritspants 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Sure, and if we keep going back in time to perhaps the greatest American athlete of all time, Jim Thorpe - he'd handily be beaten by elite high schoolers today. |
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| ▲ | benatkin 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Basketball is a general purpose sport. The Claude of it can win. Some other sports such as gymnastics would need something more like the AlphaZero of it to win. |
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| ▲ | leksak 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Both of these sports select for different type of body types - what do you mean? Gymnasts are shorter than the average population. | |
| ▲ | triceratops 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Basketball is a general purpose sport. The Claude of it can win. There aren't too many pro-ballers shorter than 5'10" (177cm), and definitely no dominant ones. If we're defining "general purpose sport" as a sport in which people of all shapes and sizes are able to achieve greatness, then I would say soccer or golf fit that definition better. Men's soccer in the 2010s was dominated by 2 of the best players in history: Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. There's a 7 inch height difference between the two. Ronaldo is powerful and muscled, Messi is lithe and graceful. Both played in approximately the same position on the field, in the same era. Both were brilliant. |
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