Gheorghe Mureșan — the tallest who could score

Mureșan was born in Triteni, Romania, in 1971 and was diagnosed with acromegaly as a teen. The Bullets drafted him 30th overall in 1993 out of Cluj-Napoca. He arrived in Washington unable to speak fluent English. He won the 1995-96 Most Improved Player award, averaging 14.5 points and 9.6 rebounds while shooting 58.4 percent from the field — the highest field-goal percentage in the NBA that season.

Back injuries cut his career short. He played his last NBA game in 2000 at age 28. He moved with his family to suburban New Jersey, opened the Giant Basketball Academy in Branchburg, NJ, and remains active in youth coaching. He is also a co-actor in the 1998 Billy Crystal comedy *My Giant*, in which he played a literal giant.

Manute Bol — the tallest shot-blocker ever

Bol was born in Turalei, Sudan, in 1962. He was a Dinka tribesman who didn’t pick up a basketball until his late teens. He played one season at the University of Bridgeport before the Bullets drafted him 31st overall in 1985. As a rookie he averaged 5.0 blocks per game — still the NBA single-season record — and finished his career with 3.34 blocks per game across 624 games, the all-time per-game leader by a comfortable margin.

Bol weighed only 200 pounds in his playing days. He had an 8’6″ wingspan, the longest ever measured in the NBA. He’s also the only player in league history to finish his career with more blocks (2,086) than points (1,599). Bol used most of his earnings to fund humanitarian relief in Sudan during the country’s civil wars; he died in 2010 at age 47 from kidney failure linked to a rare skin disease.

Where the rest of the leaderboard lives

After Mureșan and Bol at 7’7″, the next-tallest players in NBA history are Shawn Bradley, Yao Ming, Slavko Vraneš, and Chuck Nevitt — all at 7’6″. (Yao played the most career games of any of them, 486, before chronic foot injuries forced him to retire at 30.) Boban Marjanović, the Serbian fan favorite, is listed at 7’4″ with size-22 shoes.

Victor Wembanyama, the No. 1 pick of the 2023 Draft, is officially listed at 7’4″ but with an 8-foot wingspan — the longest in current league history and only an inch behind Manute Bol’s all-time mark. If Wembanyama’s listed height ever ticks up to 7’5″ or higher (he was reportedly still growing into his second pro season), the modern leaderboard will need a fresh entry.

Background facts cross-referenced with the Wikipedia article on Gheorghe Mureșan and Pro-Football-Reference / Basketball-Reference public records. Lead image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).