I did one of my blog posts on the same topic, but I decided to revisit the topic and add my own thoughts/new material. Basketball is my favorite sport and I am a huge fan of the NBA. I often wonder why the tallest players, such as Greg Oden, Yao Ming, Bill Walton, and Joel Embiid, get injured all the time. Could their immense height play a factor in their injuries? Like I said before, athletes in all sports get injured all the time. I want to know if the tallest players in the NBA are simply more prone to injury.

This article points out that taller players have missed more games than shorter players. The author of the article states, “Since 2000, 97 players 6’9” and taller have been drafted by teams with lottery selections… These players missed 17.9 percent of their potential NBA games (regular season and postseason, where appropriate) to injury over the course of their careers, while the 95 players 6’8” or shorter missed just 13.5 percent (Stotts).” He even goes specifically into 7 footers who “have missed 24 percent of their games (Stotts).” The article shows that there is a recent trending correlation between height and games missed since 2000.  Meanwhile, this article looked at injury histories/records of over 1000 players during a 17 year period. The review “found no correlation between injury rate and player demographics, including age, weight, NBA experience, and most importantly, height (McCarthy)”.

Even though the studies above show contradicting results, can we accept the legitimacy of these results? Both studies were observational. There was no control of variables, so confounding variables could have easily impacted their injuries. There are so many to list such as: number of minutes played, poor training regimen, previous injuries sustained in college or high school, style of play. These results showed correlations, but we cannot just assume that these correlations prove tall players are more likely to get injured.

If I were to conduct an experiment to test this hypothesis, I would track down tall people who are at least 6 feet and who all fall within a small range of ages (18-25). Each person would be assigned to a group based on their height (6’0” group, 6’1” group… 7’0” group). In each group, the subjects would then be randomly assigned to a control group where they are required to not partake in any sport, or a treatment group where they are required to play recreational basketball games. The treatment groups in each height category would have to play against each other 3-4 times a week for a long period of time (possibly a year or two). Injury records from the treatment groups are then compared with each other and compared with the control groups. The subjects that are playing basketball in the treatment groups cannot be told the true nature/intent of the experiment because then some of them would try to play conservatively to avoid an injury. Who wants to get an injury? Of course, my proposed experiment isn’t flawless. There is no way I could recreate an actual professional NBA game as the subjects I use are most likely not going to be skilled or physical enough.

So far, all we have for this topic are observational studies. However, a mechanism was possibly hinted from this article. There is evidence that shows that having a high stride frequency “can reduce stress on the body and prevent injuries (Davis)”. (By the way, stride frequency is the number of steps you take over a period of time.) But can we assume that tall people have a lesser stride frequency? One can assume that tall people will have longer strides with their tall legs and therefore, less stride frequency. But is this true in all cases? Three Boston researchers recorded the heights, weights, leg length, and stride frequencies of 10 runners. The design of the study (observational or experimental) was not mentioned. The results were not strong and found no relationship between leg length and stride frequency. I believe that a sample size of 10 is just too little, and that more studies should be done to prove if taller people have small stride frequencies. Also, one can argue the case that stride frequency is just a soft end point and that we should be looking for actual structural damage of their bodies/injuries (hard end points). But stride frequency could possibly be linked as a mechanism. If evidence from numerous studies can support that, then we could possibly link a mechanism to how tall players in the NBA get injured so frequently. There is plenty of running and cutting in the NBA so how could stride frequency not apply to NBA players?

Another possible theory that can affect injuries for tall people is listed in this article. According to the article, taller people are more likely to slouch and overstretch back ligaments (Chughtai). If taller people are more likely to get back pain, then having back pain could potentially lead to a wide variety of injuries if it continues to be aggravated. However, studies were not mentioned and this assumption was from one doctor.

According to the evidence that I researched, there is nothing strong or credible that could explain why or even if taller people are more likely to get injured playing basketball. Everyone runs through the risk of injury when they play a sport, regardless of height. Besides, based on all the observational studies listed, there are just too many confounding variables that could affect an injury. Just from the evidence I found, I am going to have to conclude that height doesn’t have much of an impact in giving tall people injuries. I could be dead wrong. What do you guys think?

Picture source: http://www2.ljworld.com/weblogs/hawks_nba/tags/joel-embiid/