http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070201/ap_on_fe_st/bko_tallest_player

watch out Yao

2/1/2007 2:53:08 PM

i saw a discovery channel special on this guy the other day

apparently he had gigantism, or some deal where a tumor or some other abnormality was secreting growth hormone into his brain in very large amounts during the whole time he was growing up and even after the time he was supposed to stop growing

the tumor was sapping his strength, and nba teams didn't seriously consider him at first, but he's had surgery to remove most of it and prescription drugs to remove the rest of it since then

2/1/2007 3:00:44 PM

bet he is goofy as hell

2/1/2007 3:01:02 PM

really tall people dont succed in the nba except Yao because the refs are so biased towards him and David Stern wants to open the Chinese market.

2/1/2007 3:13:10 PM

he doesnt even play in the equivalent of China's NBA...aka hes not good enough to play in their top tier league at age 23

but hes still big as fuck, i mean REALLY REALLY REALLY BIG

2/1/2007 3:19:44 PM

i posted something about this guy about a year and a half ago

2/1/2007 3:21:00 PM

Any DC people have any interest going to see this guy try to play in Rockville?

2/1/2007 3:28:24 PM

^^i remember posting in that thread

2/1/2007 3:29:11 PM

i've seen him play at the greensboro Y and the dude is just enormous. blocks everything but is slow as hell. he has a pretty stroke for a guy his size though

2/1/2007 4:46:03 PM

Gheorghe Muresan, part two.

2/1/2007 4:48:06 PM

Yeah the dude had a tumor on his pituitary gland. He had a really innovative brain surgery at Mt. Sinai Hospital in L.A. where instead of peeling back the skin and opening up the front of the skull, they just used some arthroscopic like tools to go in through the nose and scrape and suck the tumor out. It was pretty cool and less invasive. They said soon after the surgery that he didn't tire as easily. He's been on the Discovery Channel, especially the Discovery Health Channel, a lot.

2/1/2007 6:09:25 PM

2/1/2007 11:12:15 PM

excessive height does not mean bball success.

see: manute bol, gheorghe muresan, shawn bradley, wang zhi zhi, Pavel Podkolzin...

2/1/2007 11:26:53 PM

This guy was training in Greensboro 2 years ago. I read somewhere that because of his disorder he can only play like 10 minutes a game before he is exhausted. Either that was wrong or the coach is lying to get more people to come to the arena.

2/2/2007 10:54:30 AM