The 10 Tallest Players in NBA History

Gheorghe Mureșan and Manute Bol are the tallest players in NBA history, both listed at 7 feet 7 inches. No one has ever been listed taller. Behind them, three players share second place at 7-6: Yao Ming, Shawn Bradley and Tacko Fall.

One caveat frames this entire list, and it matters: NBA heights are team-reported, and until 2019 they were routinely measured in shoes or simply rounded up. The list below uses official league listings, but those listings are not all measured the same way. More on that below.

The Tallest NBA Players Ever

Nine players in league history have been listed at 7-5 or taller. The tenth slot belongs to a six-way tie at 7-4, and we have given it to Mark Eaton as the most accomplished of that group — the full 7-4 club is listed further down.

The Two Tallest: 7-7

1. Gheorghe Mureșan — 7-7

The Romanian center shares the height record with Manute Bol and holds the production edge by a wide margin. Washington took him 30th overall in 1993, and by his third season he was one of the most efficient offensive players in basketball: in 1995-96 he averaged 14.5 points, 9.6 rebounds and 2.26 blocks while leading the NBA in field-goal percentage at 58.4%. That season won him Most Improved Player, which still makes him the tallest player ever to win a major NBA award.

Chronic back and ankle problems wrecked what followed. He missed the entire 1996-97 season and was out of the league by 2000, finishing with 307 games and career averages of 9.8 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.5 blocks on 57.3% shooting. American audiences may know him better from the 1998 Billy Crystal film My Giant, in which he played a version of himself.

2. Manute Bol — 7-7

Bol is the most statistically extreme player the NBA has ever had. He finished his career with 2,086 blocks and 1,599 points — the only player in league history to retire with more blocks than points. His 8-foot-6 wingspan is the longest ever recorded in the NBA, and as a rookie in 1985-86 he blocked 397 shots, still the second-highest single-season total ever, at nearly five a game.

Born in Sudan and drafted 31st overall in 1985 out of Bridgeport, he weighed around 200 pounds in a league of 250-pound centers, which limited him to a specialist's role across 624 games with Washington, Golden State, Philadelphia and Miami. He led the NBA in blocks twice. Off the floor he gave an estimated $3.5 million to Sudanese relief causes and founded the Ring True Foundation. He died on June 19, 2010, at 48.

The 7-6 Tier

3. Shawn Bradley — 7-6

The most durable of the giants. Philadelphia took Bradley second overall in 1993 out of BYU, and he lasted 12 seasons and 832 games — more than any other player on this list except Mark Eaton. He led the NBA in blocks in 1996-97 at 3.4 per game and finished with 2,119 for his career, averaging 8.1 points and 6.3 rebounds.

His best stretch came with Dallas, where he spent nine of his 12 seasons. He also became a recurring punchline for the number of times he was dunked on — an unfair reputation for one of the best shot-blockers of his era by rate. In January 2021 he was paralyzed when a car struck him while he was riding a bicycle near his home in St. George, Utah.

4. Yao Ming — 7-6

The best player on this list, and it is not close. Houston took Yao first overall in 2002, and he made eight All-Star teams, five All-NBA teams (two second-team, three third-team), and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016 — the first Chinese national inducted. Over 486 games he averaged 19.0 points, 9.2 rebounds and 1.9 blocks.

He is also the tallest player ever to make an All-Star team, and by a comfortable margin: no one listed at 7-7 ever did. What separated Yao from every other 7-footer of his era was skill rather than size — a genuine post game, a soft touch from the free-throw line (83.3% career), and passing vision unusual for a center.

Foot and ankle injuries — stress fractures that never fully healed — cost him most of three seasons and forced his retirement at 30.

5. Tacko Fall — 7-6

The shortest career of the 7-6 group and one of the most popular. Fall went undrafted out of UCF in 2019 and signed a two-way deal with Boston, where he became a cult figure at TD Garden; crowds chanted for him to check in during blowouts. He played 26 games for the Celtics across two seasons and 11 more for Cleveland in 2021-22, 37 in total, averaging 2.2 points and 2.4 rebounds while shooting 67.3% from the field.

Born in Dakar, Senegal, he did not start playing basketball until his teens. His NBA time was limited by the problem that has always constrained players at this height: foot speed in space against pick-and-roll offense.

The 7-5 Tier

6. Chuck Nevitt — 7-5

The tallest American-born player in NBA history and the tallest ever to win a championship, as a deep reserve on the 1985 Lakers. Nevitt lasted nine seasons and 155 games across five franchises — Houston, the Lakers, Detroit, Chicago and San Antonio — averaging 1.6 points and 1.5 rebounds.

He was famous mostly for what his presence meant: coaches sent him in when a game was already decided, which earned him the nickname "the Human Victory Cigar." Nevitt is also the counterexample to the idea that the game's giants all came from abroad — he was born in Cortez, Colorado, and played at NC State.

7. Pavel Podkolzin — 7-5

Drafted 21st overall in 2004 by Utah and immediately traded to Dallas, Podkolzin played six NBA games across two seasons and was waived in 2006. He had withdrawn from the 2003 draft after being diagnosed with acromegaly, a pituitary disorder that drives excess growth — the same condition that produced several of the sport's tallest men.

His post-basketball turn is the strangest on this list: in 2025, at 40, he made his debut as a professional soccer player in Russia, becoming the tallest player in the history of Russian football.

8. Slavko Vraneš — 7-5

The shortest NBA career of anyone on this list, and the shortest possible: one game. The Knicks drafted him 39th overall in 2003; he ended up with Portland and checked in against Minnesota on January 8, 2004, playing three minutes and recording no points, rebounds or assists. That was the entirety of his NBA career.

He is a useful reminder of what this list actually measures. Height gets a player drafted and gets him a roster spot; it does not keep him in the league.

9. Sim Bhullar — 7-5

Bhullar's three games with Sacramento in 2014-15 carry more weight than the box score suggests. On April 7, 2015, he checked in for the final 16 seconds against Minnesota and became the first player of Indian descent to appear in an NBA game. Two days later he scored his first points against Utah.

Born in Toronto to Punjabi parents and a product of New Mexico State, he signed with the Kings in August 2014 after a strong summer league. He averaged 0.7 points in his three appearances and has since played professionally in Canada, China and Taiwan.

The 7-4 Club

The 7-4 tier is a six-way tie, which is why the tenth slot above required a judgment call. Here is the full group.

10. Mark Eaton — 7-4

Eaton is the most decorated tall man in NBA history and the reason he takes the tenth slot. In 1984-85 he blocked 456 shots, an NBA single-season record that still stands, at 5.56 per game — also a record. He won Defensive Player of the Year in 1985 and 1989, made five All-Defensive teams and one All-Star team, and finished with 3,064 career blocks across 875 games, all with Utah.

His origin story is the best in the sport: he was working as an auto mechanic in Southern California when a junior-college coach talked him into playing again. He went to UCLA, barely played, and was taken in the fourth round of the 1982 draft. Eaton died on May 28, 2021, at 64, after a bicycle crash near his home in Utah.

The 2019 Rule That Shortened Half the League

Before the 2019-20 season, the NBA had no standardized way of confirming what a team put on its roster sheet. Teams listed heights measured in shoes, or rounded up, or simply carried forward a number from a player's college program. The league changed that after a run of documentation problems — the trigger was actually an age discrepancy, not a height one — and now requires teams to submit heights measured without shoes, rounded to the nearest inch, during the first week of training camp.

Shoes are worth roughly an inch, and the effect was immediate and visible. Among the notable listings that changed:

Two things stand out. Joel Embiid stopped officially being a 7-footer. And a few players went up, because they had been under-listed rather than inflated — Boban Marjanović gained an inch and joined the 7-4 club because of it.

The consequence for this list is real: the heights at the top of it were never measured under the current standard. Mureșan, Bol, Bradley, Yao and Nevitt were all listed under the old regime, and some of those inches are shoes. That does not make the ranking wrong — the standard was the same for everyone at the time — but today's listings and 1990s listings are not measuring quite the same thing.

The Tallest Active Player

Victor Wembanyama is the tallest player in the NBA today. The Spurs officially measured him at 7 feet 3½ inches without shoes when he arrived in San Antonio after the 2023 draft — he could not attend the draft combine — and listed him at 7-3 for his first two seasons. At media day in September 2025 the team moved his listing to 7-4, where it stands now.

He is also the best player ever to be this tall, on a trajectory that is not close to finished. In 2025-26 he became the first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year in league history, at 22, and carried San Antonio to the NBA Finals.

Behind him, Zach Edey (Memphis) and Rocco Zikarsky (Minnesota) are listed at 7-3, with Donovan Clingan, Kristaps Porziņģis and Walker Kessler at 7-2.

One constant across all of it: the rim is 10 feet and the court is 94 by 50 feet in all 30 current arenas, from a 1968 Madison Square Garden to a 2024 Intuit Dome. Muresan was reaching for the same rim Wembanyama reaches for now.

The Other Extreme: Muggsy Bogues at 5-3

The tallest and shortest players in NBA history are separated by 28 inches. Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues, listed at 5-3, is the shortest player ever to appear in an NBA game — and unlike most of the men above him on the height chart, he had a real career: 889 games over 14 seasons from 1987 to 2001, nine of them in Charlotte, plus stops in Washington, Golden State and Toronto.

He finished with 6,726 assists and 1,369 steals, and in 1993-94 he averaged a double-double at 10.8 points and better than 10 assists a game. He was a starting point guard on playoff teams, not a novelty act.

The next shortest are Earl Boykins at 5-5, then Spud Webb and Greg Grant at 5-7. Webb won the 1986 Slam Dunk Contest at that height. For the physical extremes in another sport, see The Tallest and Heaviest Players in NFL History — football's outer limits run wider rather than taller, with linemen well past 350 pounds.

When This Page Updates

The all-time top nine has not changed since Tacko Fall debuted in 2019, and it will not change unless someone at 7-5 or taller signs an NBA contract. The active-player section is refreshed each October, when teams file their certified heights for the new season.

FAQ

Who is the tallest NBA player ever? Gheorghe Mureșan and Manute Bol, tied at 7 feet 7 inches. No player has ever been listed taller in NBA history. Mureșan played 307 games for Washington and New Jersey; Bol played 624 for four teams.

How tall is Victor Wembanyama? The Spurs list him at 7-4. His official league measurement, taken without shoes in 2023, was 7 feet 3½ inches. He was listed at 7-3 through his first two seasons before the team updated it in September 2025.

Are NBA heights measured in shoes? Not since 2019. The league now requires teams to certify each player's height measured without shoes, rounded to the nearest inch, in the first week of training camp. Before that, listings were team-supplied and frequently included shoes.

Who is the tallest player ever to make an All-Star team? Yao Ming at 7-6, an eight-time All-Star. The tallest player to win a major NBA award is Gheorghe Mureșan at 7-7, who was Most Improved Player in 1995-96.

Who is the shortest player in NBA history? Muggsy Bogues at 5-3. He played 14 seasons and 889 games, finishing with 6,726 assists and 1,369 steals.

Did any of the tallest players win a championship? Chuck Nevitt did, as a reserve on the 1985 Lakers, which makes him the tallest player ever to win a title. Of the top nine, none of the others won a ring. Yao Ming never got past the second round.

Who has the most games played among the tallest players? Mark Eaton, at 875 games, all with Utah — with Rik Smits (867) and Shawn Bradley (832) right behind him. At the other end, four of the nine tallest players ever appeared in fewer than 40 NBA games combined, and one of them played a single game.

Why are there so few players above 7-4? Extreme height usually comes with the joint, foot and back problems that ended Mureșan's and Yao's careers, and it works against the lateral quickness modern defenses demand. Every player drafted at this height gets a chance; almost none of them last, which is why roster spots at the extreme end turn over so quickly.