In my youth, seven-foot basketball players were a rare thing. In fact, it caused quite a sensation when Jacksonville put two of them on the floor against UCLA in their NCAA tournament finals game. Today they are fairly common. This year, Florida State has players 7-4, 7-3, and 7-1. Several teams have multiple 7-footers, and that is not considered a big deal.
Why the proliferation of these tall men? Well, the population as a whole has increased, so we are pulling from a bigger pool. Also, athletic training is better, so boys who once would have been ignored because they were awkward are now taken under some coach's wing and developed. Thirdly, there has been a considerable increase in the number of foreign players coming into the U.S., and since good big men are the rarest of commodities in basketball, it follows that it is big foreign players who are the most likely to be sought out by recruiters.
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