If height were all that mattered, Chuck Nevitt would be in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
If height didn't matter at all, Greg Ostertag might not be in the NBA.
In the league today, only 7-footers are considered tall. Yao Ming, the Chinese sensation who was in town last week, is 7-feet-5, a giant by any standard.
But 7-5 doesn't an NBA superstar make. Just look at Nevitt, the 7-5 rail of a man who played nine seasons in the NBA and averaged 1.6 points, spending most of his time on the bench thinking up clever things to say.
The list of 7-footers in the Hall of Fame is short - Wilt Chamberlain is there, all 7-1 of him, as is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who is listed at 7-2.
No player 7-3 or over is in the Hall of Fame, and if Yao makes it some day, he'll likely be the first.
Currently, the NBA has six players over 7-1, and only one is of all-star caliber: Dikembe Mutombo, 7-2 and a multiple winner of the league's defensive player of the year award.
Bruno Sundov of the Indiana Pacers is 7-2, and his size helped him average 1.5 points and 1.0 rebounds in 50 games over four seasons for the Pacers since coming here from Croatia.
The Utah Jazz's Ostertag is 7-2, as is Jake Tsakalidis of both Greece and the Phoenix Suns, who averaged 7.3 points and 5.6 rebounds in 67 games this season.
The Cleveland Cavaliers' Zydrunas Ilgauskas is 7-3, but he has trouble keeping all 87 inches healthy.
And then there is Shawn Bradley, who is 7-6, and has bounced between three teams a total of six times and averaged 4.1 points and 3.3 rebounds for the Dallas Mavericks this season.
But you can't point to any of the those players and tell NBA executives Yao won't succeed.
They see in Yao a Rik Smits (7-4), which means Yao can be dangerous offensively while only fair defensively, may have problems staying healthy and very well could finish his career without a championship ring.
"But height is like quickness,'' said Kiki Vandeweghe, a former player who is now general manager of the Denver Nuggets. "You can't teach it. I can spend hours in the gym, which I used to do, but I can't teach anybody to be taller. Yao obviously has that.
"He has size, he can move pretty well. It's like a guy who is really fast. I can't teach anybody to be really fast or really tall."
The history of height in the NBA may have started with DePaul's own George Mikan, who was a 6-10 freak of nature when he entered the professional ranks in the 1940s. And tall was in vogue in the days of 7-1 Wilt Chamberlain vs. 6-10 Bill Russell.
In Houston, 7-4 Ralph Sampson combined with 7-0 Hakeem Olajuwon in the early 1980s to create the Twin Towers, but even that combination couldn't win an NBA title.
After Abdul-Jabbar, Sampson may have been the best all-around basketball player, as this quick self-assessment attests.
"The way I tried to play, I wanted to run and jump and dunk and dribble,'' Sampson said in an interview two years ago. "Hopefully people remember me for those things."
Then the NBA went through an era when anyone who could paint a ceiling without a step stool was given a chance to play.
Mark Eaton, at 7-4, was unusually adept at blocking shots, while Manute Bol was 7-7 and rail-thin, and Gheorghe Muresan was 7-7 and awkward.
"There are some like that,'' said New York Knicks coach Don Chaney. "It all depends on the makeup and basketball background of the player. But any time you have a player the size of Yao with his skill level, you have got to take a look."
Tall took on new dimensions when 7-1 Shaquille O'Neal entered the NBA, but he was the unique combination of height with girth.
In Portland, Arvydas Sabonis was 7-3 and seemingly 73 years old by the time he reached the NBA.
Yao, on the other hand, is 21 years old and has been playing at the international level for half a decade.
"Guys are more apt to take a chance with guys who are over 7 feet tall,'' said P.J. Carlesimo, the former NBA coach who conducted Yao's workout in Chicago last week. "This is just evolution. Soon some of the best players are going to be 7-3, or 7-4. If not Yao, it will be someone