Make Basketball Basket Height To Team's Height Average

By Xah Lee. Date:

Was there ever a basketball movement where the net height varies according to the team's height average?

I mean, such a rule seems would make the game more interesting and more enjoyable for people of all heights. Otherwise the game tends to become a tall freak show.


it's not about making the game dumb though.

changing the basket height according to the team's average height, arguably makes the game a more interesting, challenging, game, in the sense that it can select talents and diligent athletes from a wider population, not becoming a tall-freaks-show. We may also see more diverse playing styles of defense and offense, and faster, more energetic play from smaller built players.

For example, in boxing, weight lifting, as well as many other sports, you have weight classes. Similarly, sports are usually divided into men's competition and woman's competition.

The thing is that height, frame size, sex, is not something one can change. By having different competing classes, it focus on the competition of the invidual's ability and skill, and reduce the emphasize on such things as height and weight and sex that cannot be improved nor having some intrinsic quality with respect to sport.

For some spectator sport such as boxing, weight lifting, people of course will favor and watch the most heavy weight. If basketball adapts the basket heights based on teams's height average, i think it does not reduce the show quality of the game in anyway.

Going by average height of the team, though, makes me wonder if we'd start seeing teams with mostly very short players, plus one or two extremely tall ones.

Interesting. But both team have the freedom to envole and assemble a team af various heights. So, if it is actually advantegous to have few very tall guys among mostly short players in a team, or few very short players among guys, or any other artificial mix of super tall or super short guys… it might be interesting to observe which mix is the optimal team-height stradegy under a basket-height-change rule.

But anyway, picking up very tall or very short guys isn't easy. They still needs to be skilled player. People selected by their height without top skill are likely more of a drag then a plus.

Even if we can assemble a team of height by choosing professional players from around the world, i doubt it would actually have any advantage against a natural height professional players, under a basket-change-height rule.

It might not help that much since the taller team still has the advantage at blocking. In fact its probably even easier to block shots going towards a lower basket.

For simplicity, let's assume under this change-basket-height rule, the basket must be 2 times the player height average.

So, if team A's average height is 200 cm, then the basket they shoot to score would be 400 cm.

If then team B's average height is 170 cm, then the basket they shoot is 320 cm.

Now, 320 cm is still quite high for team A to block, in comparison to the average height of professional players (above 190 cm) and current standard basket height (305 cm)

For simple arithmetic, the above assumed a basket height multiplier of 2. It might seem high, but can be set for example to 1.9 or lower so it's more comparable to the current game.

Wikipedia ref: Basketball.