This NBA Center Position is so overrated! No wonder Horford is can play center!

[frosgrim]

That's interesting. I have always been a bit of a history buff and recently have been reading more about "pre-history" (before writing-more evidence based). Apparently humans were taller in the time when they were hunter/gatherers-early farmers...according to Anthropologists...because they lived in smaller groups and had not fully conquered their predators. Distance vision was very important.

When the Europeans became more city (or at least settlement) based - and all the bad - human eaters were safely at bay - they shortened in stature to where the average man was 5'4" and the average woman was 5'0".

More recently - look at old pictures of Abe Lincoln when he was visiting the Union Generals in their camps in the civil war. Abe was 6'4" by all accounts - but he looks like he is a foot taller than nearly all around him.

I dunno...maybe human height patterns adjust faster to requirements (of life) than one would expect.

Maybe if we raised the height of the basket the guys would grow taller ...it could be that 6 foot 9 is the optimum height for a human if the hoop is 10 feet high.

(sorry if this is a tad O.T.)

Let me comment as an anthropologist. Height is the interaction of genes, nutrition (fetal through puberty), stress, and believe it or not sleep. Early H/Gs varied in height depending upon environment (in colder climes larger body mass gets selected for due to the need to generate and conserve heat), however, in high altitude selection favors smaller over all body sized but enlarged chests to allow for increased lung capacity. Well, I could go on, but you have to look at all the above factors to understand height.

The post suggesting fast-food, including sodas, is possibly affecting height is an interesting idea and probably has some merrit. I would also like to see social stress and sleep patterns (which we know are getting screwed up in teens due mainly to keeping their phones on all night) as factors in the analysis.

In terms of centers, I agree with the idea that who would have been a center in the past is now a PF. I would also say that AAU and not staying in school is also a factor. The common wisdom that I was taught in basketball is that learning to play center is the hardest in the NBA. It takes until the mid to late 20s to really get it. However, if a kid is coming in without the fundamental skills, then his development will be further delayed, or blocked because you can't practice like teams once did.