He is up to 7'4" now and is still growing. Mark Eaton is the only player that tall to last a long time. I am not saying we should not take him if we get the top pick just stating there are risk.
Yes, I do think injury risk is probably elevated for very tall players. But I don't think we really have enough data about players that tall to quantify how much the additional risk is, was my point. Is the injury risk 10% higher? 20%? 50%? I don't think we really know. There have only been 26 players in NBA history 7'3" or taller at all, and most of those guys had basically zero basketball skills and teams just took a flyer on them because they were tall, so they never had a chance to stick around anyway. In all of NBA history, you can count the number of players Wemby's height with high-level basketball skills on one hand. That's just not enough to make a solid prediction about anything.
Don't want him. If you think this kid can stay healthy and reach his potential you are in denial. Like Zion, he won't be on the court when we need him the most.
I hear you. That said, Wemby's personal training team has supposedly had him doing all sort of things to prevent him from having typical tall-guy foot injuries. Time will tell, but I say he's worth the risk.
None of those other guys could walk and chew gum at the same time though. Being agile and coordinated goes a long way in avoiding injuries.
If you lived through Sampson, Yao and TMac, then you can live through Wemby. Heck might even bring back some sweet nostalgic feelings of times when we didn't suck ass lol.
Yao and Ralph Sampson could both do a little more than walk and chew gum at the same time but neither had a long career..
All love to Yao. He was very skilled with the upper body but he wasn't exactly agile. Try to imagine any of these big men on the dance floor. Are they actually moving their feet and doing spins and jumping around? Wemby can.
Ralph Sampson may have been a little before your time but he could do all that too and he did not last very long in this league. Hopefully Wemby will be able to last especially if we end up with the top pick. I have my doubts. The more he grows the more my doubts about his longevity grow.
That is the point, for how long before he hurts himself. With that much movement in a structure that size something got to give. Thought, a drag racing car can be steered but if used to much bad things will happen organically.
If he is one bad landing away from never reaching to his potential then it is a hard pass for me. 7'5 is an unserious height. These people are belong to circuses. They need to visit kids with leukemia in hospitals and cheer them up for the one last time. Wemby is born to play Frankenstein's monster in a Netflix show. This kid is taller than Sampson. Sampson was barely 7'2 that 7-4 is just a cap. Do we really want this kid to play PS5 lying on his hospital bed while we are competing for the playoffs couple years later?
Being an injury bust can happen to literally any player. Look at a guy like Jabari Parker. 6'7", nothing crazy about his height, right around the NBA average and not particularly chunky nor particularly thin when he came into the league. 2016-17, he was looking like he'd be All-NBA soon, dropped 20, 6, and 3 off of good efficiency. Then he tears his ACL and he's never the same again and people start calling him a bust. Just bad fortune. I just don't buy that extremely tall players are doomed to have serious injury problems. I think it just depends on the guy and to some degree on luck/fate. A lot of y'all are just still burned by what happened to Yao and Sampson, being that the Rockets have had uniquely terrible luck with top-picked big men. But that's letting your emotions doing the talking. A sample size of 2 players can't predict anything. You can roll snake eyes at any time and that may just have been what happened to the Rockets.
You guys, I really want to draft Wembanyama. Add to Houston's legacy of drafting generational bigs #1 overall. Jalen, Jabari, Victor core for a decade. Go buy Tyus Jones' services. Go buy Nurse's offense. Keep Coach Hollins for defense. Use Sengun, Martin, Porter, #20 to possibly trade for Brown? Jones-Green-Brown-Smith-Wembanyama Washington-Christopher-Tate-Eason-Garuba That team is playoff bound in the aging Western conference. Let me dream.
If Yao played in today's era he would have played 5 more years easy. Hell, if he just never played for China then he would have played 5 more years. People talk about being tall is the problem but not enough talk about the Chinese national team grinding him down every summer. No can stay injury free with a schedule like that.
That could very well be an issue with Wemby too if he chooses to play for his home country national team. That was something I had not considered.
