For a long time, the heights of certain NBA players have been something of an urban legend. Is Kevin Durant closer to seven feet than he is to 6-10? Is Dwight Howard closer to 6-7 than he is to seven feet? And how tall, actually, is LeBron James?
Well, now, thanks to some new NBA rules instituted for the upcoming season, we have official height and weights submitted from each team to the league office. The official height of LeBron James? 6-8.5, a half-inch taller than he’s been listed for the majority of his career, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania.
So, it also turns out that Kevin Durant isn’t quite the seven-footer we thought while Dwight Howard, Klay Thompson and Anthony Davis both came in as shorter than their previous mark by more than an inch. Also, the NBA stipulated that all measurements must be barefoot.
It’s still not clear why the NBA felt they needed to standardize the practice of measuring height, but we thank the league for the clarity on the great height debates of our time.
