The Strange Thought I Have Every Time I See a Man Over Six Feet

Anytime I see a man who is more than six feet tall, the quiet question that rises in my mind is if what they are doing is really the best thing the fellow is suited for.

Blame it on a study I once read, which analysed the global distribution of height among male athletes and found that a remarkable proportion of men above six feet end up in professional basketball. Depending on the year of the analysis, the figure hovered around one in five to one in ten for Americans born above 6’4 who eventually passed through the NBA pipeline.

The numbers were startling to me. And it’s not because the NBA is the natural home of every tall man. To me, it showed how height alone functions like an entrance qualification. Skill matters, of course, but for many boys the height is the first passport.

Everything else can be taught and refined. Footwork, stamina, shooting, game intelligence, even confidence. But the raw height, the one thing they cannot manufacture, is already doing heavy lifting for them before they ever touch a basketball.

I think about all those stories you hear from NBA players.

How Giannis Antetokounmpo, a Nigerian btw, now a two-time MVP, was once a skinny teenager selling sunglasses on the streets of Athens.

How Hakeem Olajuwon, before he became a legend in Houston, grew up in Lagos playing football and only found basketball at 15.

Or how Manute Bol, at 7’7, was discovered in Sudan by someone who simply couldn’t believe their eyes at the sheer height of the kid.

In each case, height opened a door, but training, discipline, and opportunity kept them inside the building.

So whenever I see someone on these streets laboring in tech or a colleague pushing project management plans, I wonder what alternative universe they may have lived. Whenever I see a tall child at a bus stop or a secondary school assembly, a part of me wonders whether someone has tapped them on the shoulder and said,

“You know, you could try basketball.”

This is not because everyone must become an athlete, but because in countries where life is a grind and social mobility is narrow, sometimes the simplest nudge changes an entire trajectory. If getting a leg-up financially is one of the goals in life, then sports, especially a height-dependent sport like basketball, might be an option worth exploring.

But then my reflections broaden.

I start thinking about all of us — tall, short, loud, quiet — walking through life doing things that may or may not be the optimum use of who we are.

Are we doing the jobs that align with our natural advantages?

Are we exploiting the opportunities available in our economy?

Are we positioned in the spaces where our talents would flourish?

I often wonder the same about myself. Am I operating at my peak possible trajectory? Or am I like the six-foot-nine boy who never realised the NBA tryout was only a bus ride away?

In places like Nigeria, these thoughts intensify. We live in a country where so many people are misaligned with their natural gifts. You meet a brilliant mathematician driving a ride-hailing car. A charismatic leader trapped in middle management. A political visionary selling office furniture. Our economy is not designed to absorb people into their optimum lanes, so everyone is always improvising, surviving, adjusting, compromising.

And the question always come back to, “What is the best thing we could each be doing with the bodies, the minds, the opportunities, and the privileges we have been handed?”

No one will ever fully know. Life is too complex, opportunities too uneven, and luck too unpredictable. But the question itself is useful because it forces us to step back and reconsider how we are spending the one life we get.

So yes, whenever I see a man towering above me at six feet, my mind wanders. But it is not really about basketball. It is about potential. The gifts we underuse. The future versions of ourselves that never get the chance to emerge.

These are the questions that never leave my mind. And maybe that is the point of life. That life is not simply about what we become, but about continually asking whether we have become all we could be.