How tall is Anthony Davis?

Anthony Davis's height: 6′10″ officially, 6′11″ in some references

Anthony Davis is listed by the NBA at 6′10″ (208 cm) and 253 pounds (115 kg). This site uses that NBA listing as its headline value. A second figure, 211 cm (6′11″), circulates widely in reference works (Wikidata among them) and on broadcasts. The two are close, but because the gap is about an inch, it is worth laying out exactly where each number comes from.

The most precise figure is from the 2012 NBA draft combine, held before the New Orleans Hornets took Davis first overall. ESPN's summary of the combine measurements recorded him at 6′9¼″ barefoot and 6′10½″ in shoes, with a 7′5½″ wingspan and a 9′0″ standing reach. At the time, the league's printed listings were customarily based on in-shoe heights, so 6′10″ fit the measurement neatly.

In 2019 the league told teams to submit physician-certified heights taken with shoes off, according to reporting summarized by NBC Sports, to end the old practice of rounding. Davis's NBA listing has remained 6′10″ since. The 211 cm figure is therefore best read as a common rounded-up reference value rather than an official listing. This site follows the NBA's current number, which is about 3 cm lower.

The growth spurt that made him a big man

Davis's height story is one of the most famous in modern basketball because he was not always tall. According to NBA.com, he was about 6′2″ as a high school sophomore at Perspectives Charter School on Chicago's South Side and around 6′10″ as a senior, a gain of roughly eight inches. Davis has said the bulk of it happened in a short window before his junior year, and Wikipedia records that he started his junior season at 6′8″ and was 6′10″ by the start of his senior season.

Before that growth, Davis played mostly guard and worked on his ball-handling and shooting. When he suddenly became one of the tallest players in the city, he kept those perimeter skills. Kentucky coach John Calipari compared him to Marcus Camby, another player Calipari had watched shoot up in height quickly. That combination of guard skills and a center's length is the foundation of everything Davis became.

Perspectives played in a lower division of the Chicago Public League, which drew little media attention, so Davis went from an unknown guard to one of the most coveted recruits in the country in about a year. NBA.com also notes that his father built a backyard court for him and his sisters, which is why he grew up playing at home rather than at the park where another Chicago star, Derrick Rose, played pickup games.

Length as a weapon: the wingspan and the blocks

For a player of Davis's height, the wingspan is arguably more important than the height itself. A 7′5½″ wingspan on a 6′9¼″ barefoot frame gives him an ape index, wingspan minus height, of more than eight inches, and at the 2012 combine it was one of the longest wingspans of any participant.

That length showed up immediately. At Kentucky he led the NCAA in blocks and set freshman single-season records for blocked shots in both the Southeastern Conference and Division I, on the way to the 2012 national championship and the tournament's Most Outstanding Player award. In the NBA, he led the league in blocks per game in his second season and has been named to five All-Defensive teams.

Offensively, his height and guard background let him play away from the basket. In the 2017 All-Star Game he scored 52 points, then a record, largely on dunks and lobs, and he was named the game's MVP. He has played both power forward and center, often sliding to center in the playoffs, as he did during the Lakers' 2020 championship run.

Power forward or center?

Davis's height sits right on the boundary between the two frontcourt positions, which is why his position has been debated throughout his career. At 6′10″ in NBA listings he is as tall as many starting centers, yet his guard-trained footwork and handle are those of a forward. NBA.com currently describes him as a forward-center. In practice, coaches have tended to start him at power forward next to a traditional center during the regular season and slide him to center in playoff closing lineups, when spacing and switching matter most. The Lakers' 2020 title run is the clearest example: Davis played heavy minutes at center late in games, with LeBron James beside him and shooters around them.

That flexibility is a direct product of the growth spurt described above. Players who are tall from childhood are often taught to play near the basket; Davis spent his formative years as a guard and only became a big man at 16 or 17, so he brought a perimeter player's habits to a center's body.

Anthony Davis next to teammates and rivals

Davis has played for the Pelicans, Lakers, Mavericks and Wizards, and for the United States at three major tournaments. The table compares him with notable teammates and rivals using this site's figures.

The LeBron James pairing produced Davis's greatest team success: the 2020 NBA title in the Orlando bubble and the inaugural NBA Cup in 2023. James is about 2 cm shorter in the site's data (one inch in NBA listings), and the two often traded roles, with Davis taking the center position in closing lineups.

The 2025 trade sent Davis to Dallas for Luka Dončić in what was widely described as one of the most unexpected trades in American sports history. A year later, on February 4, 2026, the Mavericks agreed to send him to the Washington Wizards in an eight-player trade, the Associated Press reported. In Washington he joined Trae Young, whom the Wizards had acquired weeks earlier; there are more than 20 cm between them.

Three gold medals and the Team USA frontcourt

Davis is one of the few players to win gold at the Olympics both as a teenager and as a veteran. He was added to the 2012 London team in the summer after he was drafted, won the 2014 FIBA World Cup, and returned for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Along with his 2012 NCAA title and 2020 NBA championship, the 2012 Olympic gold also gives him the rare "triple crown" of college title, Olympic gold and NBA title.

His role on those teams tracks his growth as a player. In 2012 he was the youngest member of the roster and played sparingly. In 2024 he was one of the team's primary big men alongside Joel Embiid and Bam Adebayo, and his combination of length and mobility made him valuable in the international game, where centers are asked to guard the perimeter more often than in the NBA. On this site Embiid is listed at 213 cm and Adebayo at 208 cm, so the three bigs spanned only about 5 cm, but they played very differently: Embiid as a post scorer, Adebayo as a switching defender, and Davis as a rim protector who could also run the floor.

Why the 208 cm versus 211 cm difference exists

The inch between Davis's official listing, which this site uses, and the 6′11″ reference figure is typical of how heights drift between sources, and it is worth understanding because it affects comparisons.

• 206 cm is his 2012 barefoot measurement (6′9¼″), the closest thing to a clinical height in the public record.
• 208 cm is the NBA's 6′10″ listing, which since 2019 is supposed to reflect a certified, shoes-off measurement rounded to the nearest inch. It is the figure this site uses.
• 210 cm is roughly what he measured in basketball shoes in 2012 (6′10½″), which is close to how tall he looks on court.
• 211 cm is the 6′11″ reference value found in Wikidata and some media, likely an in-shoe height rounded upward.

All four describe the same person. When comparing Davis with another player, the fairest approach is to compare like with like: NBA listing against NBA listing, or barefoot measurement against barefoot measurement. For example, the NBA lists LeBron James at 6′9″ and Davis at 6′10″, a one-inch difference; pairing Davis's 6′11″ reference figure with James's listing would wrongly stretch the gap to about 5 cm. For those exact gaps, the height difference calculator converts any pair of heights.

Family heights

Davis's height did not come out of nowhere. According to his Wikipedia biography, his father, Anthony Davis Sr., is 6′3″ (191 cm) and his mother, Erainer, is 6′1″ (185 cm). Both are far above the averages for American adults, especially his mother: the average American woman of her generation is around 163 to 164 cm, so at 185 cm she is more than 20 cm above the norm. Davis has a twin sister, Antoinette, and an older sister, Lesha, who played basketball at Daley College.

A simple mid-parental height estimate, which averages the parents' heights and adds 6.5 cm for a son, would predict a height of roughly 194 cm (6′4½″) for Davis. He ended up about 14 to 17 cm above that, depending on which of his heights you use. That is a useful reminder that parental formulas predict an average outcome for a family, not a ceiling. You can try the same calculation for any family with our height calculator.

Compared with the average American man

Davis was born on March 11, 1993, in Chicago. The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration estimates that American men born in 1996 average about 177.1 cm.

Whichever figure you choose, Davis is more than a foot taller than the average American man, which places him far beyond the 99th percentile of the national distribution. You can see how rare that is on our United States average height page.

Build and durability

Davis has been listed at a range of weights over his career; the NBA now lists him at 253 pounds. He entered the league much lighter: the 2012 combine recorded him at 221.8 pounds (100.6 kg), so he has added about 30 pounds since his rookie year. That added mass reflects the shift from a slender power forward who relied on length to a player who regularly defends centers. Injuries have been a recurring part of his career, including the left-hand injury that had sidelined him in early 2026 at the time of the Wizards trade; we mention this only because it affected his availability and do not speculate about his health.

Seeing Anthony Davis at true scale

To see Davis next to another player, use the main height comparison tool, which lets you toggle between figures and compare them at true scale. Good comparisons include Davis next to LeBron James, the championship pairing, and Davis next to Kyrie Irving, which shows the full range of a typical NBA roster. For other athletes and public figures, browse the celebrity heights hub.