Rudy Gobert and the All-NBA Body Parts Team
In the NBA anymore, being 7-feet tall isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Being 7-foot long.
Is Kawhi Leonard 7-feet tall? Nope, but’s he’s 7-feet long. Is Draymond Green 7-feet tall? Nope, but he’s 7-feet long. Is any member of the 2016 All-NBA frontcourt 7-feet tall? Nope, but they’re all 7-feet long. Leonard, Green, DeAndre Jordan, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, DeMarcus Cousins, Andre Drummond, LaMarcus Aldridge, Paul George…all of the league’s best big men have wingspan longer than seven feet! Well, Paul George’s wingspan is actually a measly 6-foot 11-and-a-quarter inches, but you get the idea; long arms are important!
Of course, you already knew that. Everybody already knew that. Jay Bilas made sure we all knew that. But did you know that the arms aren’t the only part of the body that can contribute to an NBA player’s success? It’s true, legs definitely help too. Other body parts probably have their own roles to play, I’m not sure. What is clear is that there are a lot of body parts in the NBA and some of them are downright impressive.
And what better way to celebrate the NBA’s rich diversity of body parts than to create the inaugural All-NBA Body Parts Team?
Position #1: Arms
Above, we’ve already listed some of the most well-qualified candidates for this position on the All-NBA Body Parts Team; any one of those aforementioned long-armed All-Stars could fill this spot.
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Leonard and Green are particularly enticing options. At the NBA Draft Combine, both players were measured at 6-foot-6 tall with shoes off, but their arms are absurdly long: 7-foot-1.25 in Green’s case and 7-foot-3 for Leonard. That equates to wingspan-to-height ratios of 110 and 112 percent, respectively. These stretchy studs are both prototypes for the modern NBA star, the top-two choices for Defensive Player of the Year for two seasons running. They’re quick enough to guard shifty players around the perimeter and long enough to help protect the rim.
Leonard and Green are good options, but they’re not the best. There’s another. One with even longer limbs.
1st Team: Rudy Gobert’s arms
Gobert stands just a hair over seven feet (7-foot-0.5) with a wingspan-to-height ratio of 109 percent, nearly as impressive as Leonard and Green. But, in terms of absolute length, Gobert is in a class of his own: unfurling a ridiculous 7-foot-8.5 wingspan! Gobert has used all that length to become one of the elite rim protectors in the NBA. Pick a stat — blocks per game, field goal percentage at the rim, defensive plus/minus — he’s been top-five league-wide in all of these measures. But, it’s safe to say he wouldn’t be nearly as dominant a force in the paint without arms.
The plot above demonstrates Gobert’s wingspan relative to every other entrant in the NBA Draft Combine since 2000 (via NBA.com). You can find his green dot all the way up at the top, sitting on the extreme edge of possibilities for NBA body types.
And at the bottom? On the far left? There with that orange dot is J.J. Redick.
Last Team: J.J. Redick’s arms
Redick is like…what’s the opposite of a unicorn? A miniature horse? He’s the rare NBA player with arms shorter than his height. He’s 6-foot-4 with a 6-foot-3 wingspan. To Jay Bilas, he’s an abomination.
Position #2: Legs
But like I said, arms aren’t the only body part that’s important for playing basketball. What about, like, legs, for example. There are some players in the NBA with really long legs.
Who are they? Well Giannis Antetokounmpo, for one. After all, they call him the Greek Freak. And do you want to know the freakiest part about him? It’s his legs. They’re long. Freaky long.
Unfortunately, they don’t measure legspan at the NBA combine, but if they did, I think they would have found that Kevin Durant’s legs are even longer than Antetokounmpo’s.
1st Team: Kevin Durant’s legs
Durant doesn’t just rest on his long legs, either, he uses them to great effect on the court. He has an uncanny ability to stretch each dribble further than what would seem possible, outpacing even his also-tall NBA counterparts. He can start a drive at the top of the key, take one dribble, stretch his legs out, and somehow re-materialize at the basket.
Importantly, during this season, his first with the Golden State Warriors, Durant is wearing his shorts higher than ever before. I’m not convinced he’s actually wearing shorter shorts per se. I think maybe he’s just wearing the same-sized shorts, but now, higher on his waist. Regardless of the precise sartorial details, the result is the same: Durant’s legs are looking even longer than they once did. With the added space, Durant now has room to flaunt lifesize tattooes of Rick James and Tupac — two music icons — both on the same leg!
Short-shorts make long legs look longer, but, the opposite is also true: long-shorts make short legs look shorter.
Last Team: Isaiah Thomas’s legs
At 5-foot-9, Thomas is one of the shortest players in the NBA, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at his shorts; they’re long, as long as the uniforms worn by many taller men in the NBA. At least, they were that long when he was on the Suns a few years ago. Like Durant, he’s wearing his shorts a bit higher these days. It’s OK, he’s getting my Last Team All-Legs nod either way.
Position #3: Butts
When properly deployed, the butt can be a powerful weapon in a basketball game. Point God, Chris Paul, uses his to draw fouls — forcing his defenders to crash into his rear end by stopping short in the backcourt. Likewise, any number of husky NBA big men use their derrieres to push defenders around in the post: Cousins, Glen Davis, Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph, Jusuf Nurkic, Jared Sullinger, to name a few. These guys have big butts, but they have big bodies to match.
Anybody who reads Zach Lowe, however, knows that the NBA’s most famous butt belongs to a smaller body: Toronto Raptors guard, Kyle Lowry.
1st Team: Kyle Lowry’s butt
Kyle Lowry has slimmed down over the past few years, it’s true. But his backside is still prominent. Lowry uses his behind to anchor his strong drives and rugged defense; skills which are mostly incongruous with his otherwise small NBA body.
While Lowry’s rear end is big enough to see from the front, his Eastern Conference rival, Kristaps Porzingis, has a butt that you can’t even really see from behind.
Last Team: Kristaps Porzingis’ butt
Porzingis is skeletal and his slight frame is exaggerated by his tendency to wear his jersey untucked. The combination creates an appearance of a man without a butt. He’s referred to as the unicorn, because of his one-of-a-kind combination of size and skill, but unicorns have big butts and Porzingis has a small one.
Position #4: Shoulders
You can’t really make an All-NBA Body Parts Team without mentioning Dwight Howard. He’s got the physique of a minor deity and, to me, Howard’s most Olympian feature has always been his shoulders.
1st Team: Dwight Howard’s shoulders
Back in Orlando they were weirdly square-shaped; I’m thinking of, for example, Howard’s Superman Slam Dunk Contest performances. In Los Angeles and Houston they rounded out a bit and may have even gotten bigger! Nowadays, as part of a thirty-something body in Atlanta, Howard’s shoulders are perhaps beginning to slump just a bit, but I’m pretty sure they’re still larger than any other player’s in the NBA.
One thing I’ve always appreciated about Howard’s shoulders is that their extreme width has a tendency to make his head look too small for his body. I find it to be one of his most endearing qualities. On the other end of the spectrum are players like, Zaza Pachulia and Domantas Sabonis, whose narrow shoulders make their heads look oversized. Whenever I see Pachulia, I can’t help imagining him as a giant, 7-foot-tall, 10-year-old.
But Pachulia and Sabonis don’t really have small shoulders, they just have shoulders which are disproportionately small for their large bodies. I’m sure each of these guys can still lift 100-pounds right up over his head. There are some other guys in the NBA, however, who, legit, just have small shoulders.
Last Team: Brandon Ingram’s shoulders
Brandon Ingram could stand to put some meat on his bones, for example.
Position #5: Hair
Now to the really important stuff: hair. Hair? Yes, hair. It matters. Don’t believe me? Ask Dr. J. Ask Pat Riley. Ask Dwayne Schintzius. The right hair can definitely be an asset on the court.
There’s a lot of hair creativity in the NBA these days. Currently, some of my personal favorite do’s belong to Iman Shumpert, Jae Crowder, and Dennis Schroeder. Jeremy Lin deserves a lot of credit for the sheer variety of hair styles he has sported, if nothing else. But there’s something so undeniably fantastic about Elfrid Payton’s hair.
The unruliness of his hairstyle is a resplendent mixture of personality: one part carefree lightheartedness and one part staunch defiance of convention. It’s like what Murs might wear if he had to worry more about aerodynamics on stage. On an aesthetic level, the unusual structure of the whole thing is just endlessly fun to look at.
1st Team: Elfrid Payton’s hair
But who do we saddle with the shame of Last Team All-NBA Hair? Several of the league’s most obvious patsies — Chris Kaman, Andre Miller, Drew Gooden — are no longer active players. We could pin it on somebody with obvious male-pattern baldness — like Kosta Koufos or Manu Ginobili — or better yet, one with closeted male-pattern baldness; but that just seems unnecessarily cruel.
So, let’s rethink this….
Position #5: Chest hair
There was a time when NBA players weren’t afraid to show off their chest hair like Scott Howard on a moonlit night. But the modern NBA is a manicured NBA. Really, I can’t think of a single player who has chest hair sticking out of his jersey these days.
1st Team: Andre Drummond’s chest hair
Of course, the internet knows all things and it will show you that Andre Drummond has some pretty thick chest hair. Impressively, he’s only 23-years-old, so he has a lot of room for growth. Chest-hair growth.
If Google searching “NBA players with chest hair” seems like a bad idea, how do you think my search for “NBA players without chest hair” went? So, who then, am I supposed to put on the Last Team All-NBA Chest Hair? It seems pretty likely that Devin Booker has a hair-free chest, because, you know, he’s so young and all. But, as the sole arbiter of the entire All-NBA Body Part Team selection process, it would be irresponsible of me to make any such assumptions without more rigorous proof.
So, once again we’ve come to a dead end…
Position #5: Facial hair
I think we can all agree that Russell Westbrook has the worst facial hair in the NBA.
Last Team: Russell Westbrook’s facial hair
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome. I love it. Don’t ever change, Russ. But, objectively, it’s also kind of gross. He looks like the first kid in your junior high who could grow a mustache. It’s all patchy — thin and wispy under his nose, darker and more noticeable around the corners of his mouth. Undeterred by the unevenness of his lip coverage, though, Westbrook keeps rocking the stache with surprising consistency.
Westbrook’s deficiencies are perhaps more noticeable because of the strength of his teammates facial hair. The Stache Brothers, Enes Kanter and Steven Adams, both have amazingly thick lip fur. Really, there’s only one NBA team that could hope to match the Oklahoma City Thunder on the facial-hair power index: that’s the Los Angeles Clippers. Remember when DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin grew matching mustaches for MO-vember a few years ago? Even Chris Paul got in on the act. Not Cliff, Chris. The Clips were never more likeable!
There are some great beards in the NBA, too, of course. Kyle O’Quinn, Nikola Pekovic, and Chris Andersen all have their own things working. But the undisputed champion of NBA facial hair has got to be James Harden.
1st Team: James Harden’s facial hair
Harden is now completely synonymous with his beard. I mean, the guy’s nickname is “The Beard”. Can you even remember what he looked like pre-beard? Can he?
At this point, realistically, Harden’s beard is probably too strong and too thick for him to ever shave it off again. That means he’s going to be a perennial All-NBA Body Parts selection. But you know what? He deserves it.
The First Team
So, to summarize, here’s the full roster of the All-NBA Body Parts Team:
Hair: Elfrid Payton Andre Drummond James Harden’s facial hair
Shoulders: Dwight Howard’s shoulders
Arms: Rudy Gobert’ arms
Butt: Kyle Lowry’s butt
Legs: Kevin Durant’s legs
Imagine combining all those body parts into one player!
Well…I guess that would basically just be Anthony Davis, only if you could migrate Harden’s beard to the eyebrow region of the face. So, I’m not exactly Dr. Frankenstein, here. But still, it’s a great team for a first try, right?
To anybody who was skimming this post to find a joke about Greg Oden: I’m sorry, this is the end.