From this TED Talk on whether athletes are really getting more athletic, or whether they’re just getting the benefits of improved technology:
Today, one in 10 men in the NBA is at least seven feet tall, but a seven-foot-tall man is incredibly rare in the general population – so rare that if you know an American man between the ages of 20 and 40 who is at least seven feet tall, there’s a 17 percent chance he’s in the NBA right now.
What’s weird is that the answer to the “human or technology” question seems to be “humans are getting weirder shaped, but overall performance isn’t improving very much.” I do appreciate the NBA’s monopoly on tall men, but my absolute favorite is the increased forearm length of water polo players.
Who even measures these things?