Victor Wembaniama, shown here with Bilal Coulibaly at Rucker Park last week, will enter the NBA as the league’s 2nd tallest player.
Victor Vembaniyama has grown up a bit. Or not, depending on perspective.
The San Antonio Spurs said Wednesday that the official height for the No. 1 pick in this year’s draft is 7 feet, 3-1/2 inches — and that was measured without shoes, according to NBA guidelines.
That’s half an inch taller than Wembaniama said when he was in Las Vegas for a pair of exhibition games in October. (His official height at the time was 2.21 meters, he said he is now almost 2.23 meters.) Since he was 18 at the time, he is now 19, and it is reasonable to think that he may still be growing a bit.
He’s listed by various sites as anywhere between 7-foot-2 and 7-foot-5, because of how he towers over other 7-footers when standing and taking pictures with them. The NBA listed him as 7-foot-4 in the league’s guide to last week’s draft, but that’s not based on any official measurements.
The 7-3.5 tally paces Vembanayama as the NBA’s second-tallest player this coming season. Officially, the NBA listed Boban Marjanovic at 7-foot-4 last season, making him the league’s tallest player. Kristaps Porzingis, who played for Washington and was later traded to Boston, is listed at 7-foot-3.
Every player in the draft has had their height measured by the NBA in recent weeks, most of them at the 2023 draft combine held in Chicago in May. Vembanyama is not connected; His team in France was still in its season at the time, so he couldn’t measure up to Chicago.
But when he arrived in San Antonio last weekend, the Spurs got an official number.
Vembanyama would have been a much taller player. Purdue’s Zach Eddy, who measured in at 7 feet, 3-1/4 inches, is the AP College Basketball Player of the Year who decided to return to school, the NBA said.
The NBA changed its policy before the 2019-20 season to require players’ official height to be measured without shoes. This led many players to „shrink” an inch, although a few players — for example, Kevin Durant, who officially measured 6-foot-10 from being listed at 6-foot-9 — actually gained an inch. On paper when their measurement was updated.