Tallest NBA Players

The tallest players ever to reach the NBA

Only a small group of human beings stand 7′3″ or taller, and a remarkable share of them have passed through the National Basketball Association. Wikipedia's list of the tallest players in league history counts thirty players listed at 7′3″ (221 cm) or above as of the 2025–26 season, with three of them active: Victor Wembanyama, Zach Edey and Rocco Zikarsky.

This page ranks thirty notable tall players with a recorded height on Wikidata, from the two 7′7″ centers at the top down to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at 218 cm (7′2″). The average height across the thirty is about 223.5 cm (7′4″). That is roughly 46 cm, or a foot and a half, taller than the average American man born in 1996, who stands about 177 cm according to the NCD-RisC data on our United States average height page.

Mureșan and Bol: two ways to stand 7′7″

The top of the list is a tie, and the two men who share it could hardly have been more different players.

Gheorghe Mureșan, from Romania, was drafted 30th overall by the Washington Bullets in 1993. Wikipedia lists him at 7′7″ and 303 lb (137 kg). He played five seasons in Washington and two with the New Jersey Nets, shot .573 from the field across 307 games, and won the league's Most Improved Player award for 1995–96.

Manute Bol was almost the opposite physically: Wikipedia lists him at 200 lb (91 kg), more than 100 lb lighter than Mureșan at the same height. Official NBA sources have recorded his height as both 7′6″ and 7′7″, which is why some lists put him second. Bol's career was defined by shot-blocking. In 625 games for Washington, Golden State, Philadelphia and Miami he blocked 2,086 shots, an average of 3.3 a game, while averaging 2.6 points. In 1987–88 he shared the Bullets' roster with Muggsy Bogues, the shortest player in league history, and the 28-inch (71 cm) gap between them is still the most-cited height contrast in the sport. His son, Bol Bol, later reached the NBA as well and appears on this list.

Measured heights and the 2019 rule change

NBA heights carried a reputation for generosity for decades. In September 2019 the New York Times reported, and NBC Sports summarized, that teams had been told to certify and submit the precise height and age of every player within the first week of training camp. Heights were to be taken with shoes off; weight was left out because it changes so often.

The NBC Sports piece used Kevin Durant as its example. He had been listed at 6′9″ for years, a number reportedly based on a measurement taken at a Nike camp when he was 17, even though he measured 6′10¾″ at the 2007 pre-draft camp. NBA.com now lists him at 6′11″, the figure this site uses for his height page. The rule cut the other way too: CBS Sports reported that the No. 1 pick that year, Zion Williamson, was officially measured at 6′6″ after being listed at 6′7″ at Duke, and noted that shoes generally add about an inch.

For the giants on this page, the 2019 rule matters mainly for current players. Wembanyama, Edey and Fall all carry heights that were recorded under the barefoot policy. Most of the older figures, for players such as Bol, Eaton or Sampson, come from rosters and media guides of their own eras, so they may not be strictly comparable.

Current players: Wembanyama, Edey and Fall

Victor Wembanyama is listed at 7′4″ by NBA.com, which this site records as 223.5 cm. The San Antonio Spurs took him first overall in the 2023 draft, and Wikipedia's list describes him as the tallest active player in the league and a two-time All-Star. What sets him apart from almost everyone else in this table is production: through the 2025–26 season he averaged 23.4 points, 11.0 rebounds and 3.5 blocks a game, a combination of scoring and rim protection that no other player in the table matched: Yao averaged 19.1 points but 1.9 blocks, and Eaton 3.5 blocks but 6.0 points.

Zach Edey is a useful example of how listings can differ. NBA.com gives him 7′4″, the value this site uses (224 cm). Wikipedia's list puts him at 7′3″. Either way he joined the Memphis Grizzlies in 2024 after two national player of the year awards in college.

Tacko Fall is listed at 7′6″ on NBA.com, or 228.6 cm. His NBA minutes have been limited, 37 games through 2025–26 according to Wikipedia's table, but his height places him fifth all-time.

Rocco Zikarsky of the Minnesota Timberwolves, listed at 7′3″ on Wikipedia, is the third active player in the 7′3″ club but does not yet appear in this site's thirty-player ranking.

Yao Ming and the Hall of Fame giants

Of all the players in the table, Yao Ming had the most decorated career. NBA.com lists him at 7′6″ (229 cm). The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, which enshrined him in 2016, describes a center who joined the Houston Rockets in 2002 months after leading the Shanghai Sharks to a Chinese Basketball Association title. In eight NBA seasons he made eight All-Star rosters and five All-NBA teams. Wikipedia's list notes that he is the tallest player ever to appear in an All-Star Game and the tallest Hall of Fame inductee. He is featured on his own height page.

Only three players 7′3″ or taller have been elected to the Hall of Fame: Yao, Ralph Sampson and Arvydas Sabonis. Sampson, at 224 cm, was the first pick of the 1983 draft and a four-time All-Star. Sabonis, at 220 cm on this site, was drafted in 1986 but, as Wikipedia notes, was kept out of the NBA for most of his career by restrictions set by the Soviet Union; he finally joined the Portland Trail Blazers in 1995.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar closes this page's ranking at 218 cm (7′2″). He is the reminder that extreme height is neither necessary nor sufficient for greatness at center: several players above him on the list played only a handful of games.

Blocks, records and short careers

The table divides roughly into two groups: players whose height became a lasting weapon, and players whose NBA stays were brief.

The shot-blockers

Height translates most directly into blocked shots, and the list is full of records.

• Mark Eaton (224 cm) holds the NBA record for blocks per game in a season, 5.56 in 1984–85, and for a career, 3.50. Both marks still stand, according to Wikipedia.
• Shawn Bradley (229 cm), born to American parents in West Germany, blocked 2,119 shots over 832 games.
• Victor Wembanyama (223.5 cm) was averaging 3.5 blocks a game through 2025–26, level with Eaton's career rate.
• Keith Closs (221 cm) averaged 5.9 blocks a game in college, still the NCAA Division I record.

Brief appearances

At the other extreme are players who reached the league but barely stepped on the court. Slavko Vraneš played a single game for Portland, on January 8, 2004, lasting three minutes. Sim Bhullar, the first NBA player of Indian descent, played 16 seconds in his debut on April 7, 2015, and three games in total for Sacramento. Pavel Podkolzin appeared in six games for Dallas. These cases show that a team's interest in extreme height does not guarantee a role once the skill and mobility demands of the modern game take over.

A global list

Height of this kind is rare everywhere, so the league's tallest players have come from far beyond the United States. The current record holder, Mureșan, is Romanian; Yao was born in Shanghai and starred for the Shanghai Sharks before joining Houston; Bradley was born in West Germany; and Sabonis spent most of his prime in the Soviet system. Wikipedia notes several national firsts among the 7′3″ club: Ha Seung-jin is the only Korean to have played in the NBA, Hasheem Thabeet the only Tanzanian and Edy Tavares the only Cape Verdean.

The tallest man ever drafted never played at all. Yasutaka Okayama of Japan, listed at 7′8″ (234 cm), was taken 171st overall by the Golden State Warriors in the seventh round of the 1981 draft.

Why this ranking differs slightly from other lists

This page's thirty names are drawn from notable players with a height recorded on Wikidata, so it does not match Wikipedia's 7′3″ list one for one. A few differences are worth knowing:

• Bol Bol is recorded here at 221 cm (7′3″), the height on his NBA.com profile, which puts him level with Ilgauskas and Thabeet. Wikidata had carried 218.4 cm (7′2″).
• Zach Edey is recorded at 224 cm (7′4″), matching NBA.com rather than Wikipedia's 7′3″.
• Tibor Pleiß, Serge Zwikker and Rocco Zikarsky appear on Wikipedia's 7′3″ list but not in this site's top thirty, while Nedžad Sinanović and Georgios Papagiannis (221 cm and 220 cm here) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (218 cm) do. Zwikker never played a regular-season game: he spent the 1997–98 season on Houston's injured list.
• Heights at this level are usually rounded to the inch, and an inch is 2.54 cm, so players separated by one place in the table may in reality be the same height.

Where the site's value and an official league listing disagree, the player's own record lists the sources behind the figure.

Putting 7-footers in perspective

Numbers this large are hard to picture. Shaquille O'Neal, whom most fans think of as enormous, is listed at 7′1″ (216 cm) on NBA.com and would not make this top thirty; Mureșan and Bol stood 15 cm taller. Michael Jordan, at 198 cm, would have looked up at Bol by about 33 cm, roughly the length of a ruler.

To see the gaps, add any of these players to the height comparison tool alongside yourself, or use the height difference calculator to measure exactly how far Wembanyama stands above Shaquille O'Neal. For more ranked lists, including the NFL and football's tallest goalkeepers and defenders, see the tallest hub.