What Bill Simmons Got Wrong About Short NBA Players

I’ve been listening to old podcasts during quarantine and I heard a theory from Bill Simmons that seemed counter-intuitive. On his July 18, 2019 podcast, Bill Simmons said shorter NBA players don’t age well. He said only two players 6'1" or smaller had ever had a season past 35 with 11 points per game and 5 assists per game.

Fact Check: True. Here’s the link.

John Stockton and Lenny Wilkins are the only players, with a total of 7 individual seasons that fit those criteria.

If you look at players 6'2" for the same criteria, you get 12 players with 18 individual seasons. So does that mean small players don’t age well? Let’s not jump there, quite yet.

For starters if we make the criteria 6'3" and below: 14 seasons
6'4" and above: 11 seasons

The player that Bill Simmons was making a point about is Chris Paul who is 6'0". I think the 6'3" Steve Nash is more like Chris Paul than he is the 6'6" Jordan or Bryant.

In fact, if you change it to players 6'8" and above, there are only 2 seasons that qualify. 6'9" Bird and 6'9" Magic. So based on early results, it would be more accurate to say that tall players don’t age well. But this is based on points and assists, so let’s not jump there yet either.

To form strong conclusions, there are still two questions to determine regarding our methodology.
1. What are the sample sizes for the heights in question?
2…