International Height Gap

Mark Cuban's addressing big picture issues about the globalization of basketball here, and I don't have time to decide what I think about his views, but this is an interesting observation: "If you look at NBA rosters and estimate that there will be about international 75 players that make team rosters, in glancing at that list, fewer than 10 are under 6'5."

Why would that be? Best guess is that the bulk of athletically talented people in the 6-6.5 feet range are encouraged to try to become tall soccer players rather than short basketball players. Once you get into the super-tall height ranges then even in Europe the bulk of athletically gifted people are encouraged to give hoops a try. This reminds me of something I've often been curious about. How many people in the world are over seven feet tall? And how many of those people are between the ages of, say, twenty and thirty? And out of that group of 20-30 year-old seven footers, what proportion are playing professional basketball in one league or another?