Many people believe that the bigs of the league don’t stick around as long as the guards do. Citing injuries, or the fact that there are just not as many good seven-footers as guards, there is no reason to keep them around, right? Wrong. Checking out the graphic below we can see that players seven feet and taller actually average out to have longer careers than any other sized player.
To the data! 3396 players data were taken into account for this graphic, with the requirements that they 1. have retired and 2. played 1 or more seasons in the NBA. From that, we get 419 players that were 6’1″ or smaller; they averaged out to play 4.3 seasons. 844 players stood 6’2″ to 6’4″ and those guys only played 4.1 seasons, the smallest average of the five intervals. 947 guys were from 6’5″ to 6’7″ and they played 4.9 seasons on average. The most players were in the 6’8″ to 6’11” interval and there were 999 players there; they averaged the second longest NBA tenure, with 5.7 seasons. The interval with the longest NBA career were, surprisingly, the 7 footers. There were 187 players in this interval, the smallest amount of the five.
This data might not be what most NBA fans would have expected, but if you dive into it and think about it, who is gonna turn down a seven footer? These guys could turn around at anytime and their potential is constantly through the roof because of their size, not necessarily their skill. In contrast, a 6 foot guard is a dime a dozen, which means if you aren’t performing well you might as well show yourself the door.
Once again, super simple, yet entertaining graphic to help get you through the NBA offseason. Check me out on Twitter and lets talk more about this and the other good stuff I post there. I promise, its almost all good. Well, 50%. I’ll take 50%.
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