StarTalk Radio - Basketball Physics, with NBA Legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Episode Date: May 11, 2018

Slam dunks, skyhooks, three-pointers, bank shots and rebounds – Investigate the physics of basketball with host Neil deGrasse Tyson, NBA All-Time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, comic co-host Chuck Nice, astrophysicist Charles Liu, and NBA analyst Jim Spanarkel.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/basketball-physics-with-nba-legend-kareem-abdul-jabbar/Photo Credit: Brandon Royal. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to the Hall of the Universe. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And tonight, we're going to explore the science of basketball. And to do that, we are featuring my interview with NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Woo! Oh!

So let's do this! All right. My co-hosts. Comedian Chuck Nice. How are you? Dude. Tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic. Yes.

Very nice. And also joining me is a friend and colleague, Charles Liu. Charles! He's an astrophysicist with the City University of New York at Staten Island. Yes. Long-time friend of the show. And why do we have another astrophysicist on a show about basketball? Because Charles has a certain sort of geek-spertise in so many different things.

And you open a portfolio, and we went there, and basketball was in the portfolio. Of course. I am in parabolic orbit over this show. See, he really is an astrophysicist. I cannot wait. So you're going to help us sort of break down the physics of the game? What a wonderful game. I'd only be able to take it so far because we both know physics, but you were totally geeked out by it.

It is remarkable. You would imagine that a little hoop 18 inches across and a ball just under 10 inches across could not produce as much awesomeness as basketball does the awesomosity knows no bounds none all right so kareem abdul-jabbar is nba all-time leading scorer all time yeah 38 387 points. Wow. But did you know he's also a scholar? Kareem is a prolific cultural columnist and a best-selling author. I don't know if you knew that. I didn't know all that.

No wonder you like him. I asked him about that bookish background. So let's check it out and see what happens. You may be like the smartest professional player in any sport that there ever was. I don't know about that. I'm just thinking you're a scholar and I'm an academic, so I focus on that. You've written books. You're thoughtful. Yeah, I think what it all started was the fact that my dad liked to read. My dad was an avid reader.

He would sell books by weight and buy them by weight down at those bookstores they have down there on 3rd Avenue. In the old days, yeah. In the old days. There are no bookstores anymore. Oh, okay. So I remember going down there with him a couple of times but he was an avid reader and I just realized that there was a lot of knowledge in there that I might want to know something about and I That's how I guess I got to be

What do they call it bookish? Yeah, so these are the seeds ready to sprout when you were done with basketball, right? She's written 12 books. 12. Wow. 12 books. He was a regular columnist for Time magazine on all topics surrounding religion, race, and society. And so I just thought this was a brilliant guy.

By the way, okay, he also spent 20 seasons in the NBA, was NBA All-Star for 19 of those 20 years. He spent 14 years with the Lakers. He was a six-time NBA champion, six-time NBA Most Valuable Player. He did that on the side. He's a failure, is what he's trying to tell us. Clearly, he's done nothing with his life. Clearly he's done nothing with his life.

Kareem really demonstrates how much a misconception it is that athletes are not intellectuals and intellectuals can't be athletes. Because that's a stereotype. That's right. We just pigeonhole people. It's as simple as that. We human beings have a tendency to categorize. And in this kind of way, it's hard to consider someone that can be both physically and intellectually gifted. kind of way it's hard to consider someone that can be both physically and intellectually gifted. Furthermore, you have to realize, I hope everybody realizes, that to be athletically effective you have to be intellectual on whatever playing field that you're on.

Yeah. No. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm, you know, I just got to take issue with that because, by the way, there are some very smart jocks, but there are some very smart jocks but there are some very dumb jocks too but i'm sorry there are but look there are some very smart astrophysicists and very dumb astrophysicists yes but the dumbest astrophysicist is the smartest regular person you'll ever meet i like you guys actually know guys and you're like that dude is an idiot and he's an astrophysicist and he looks down on the rest of us yeah yeah Chuck he's he's right he's kind of

a little bit right about that I'm just saying come on just saying just saying so this is just evidence that you know we pigeonhole people. We don't want them to be more than the one thing they're good at. And I don't really understand that. I don't. Because the truth of the matter is, we can't handle people having it all. Why not? You know what I mean? Seriously.

Like, you don't want somebody who is mentally. That's why we laugh at famous people who trip on something in the street. Of course. Something bad has got to happen to something. Because you don't want somebody who is mentally and physically superior. You don't want somebody to have it all. Had Kareem continued his career in basketball longer, he would have done that for a longer period of time

before he shifted over to something else, like writing all of his amazing books. Okay. Exactly. So now I want to show y'all a picture of Chuck Lue as a weightlifting champion. Oh, I missed that. Yeah, because it don't exist. Oh, I thought we had a picture.

Only with my mind. my mind. So Kareem, as a basketball player, was most famous for perfecting this accurate, deadly shot called the sky hook. Indefensible. Indefensible. So I had to just ask him about his high-flying sky hook. Let's check it out. When I look at a basketball game, part of me sees it as a physicist does. So there's a ball, it's round, there's a hoop, which is bigger than the ball. And there are all manners of shots that come at it from different angles, different trajectories. And your sky hook, your hand at fully extended has got to be like eight or nine feet in the air I mean did they measure this when I shot this guy hook my hand was about between ten feet and eleven feet in the air because you're also jumping yeah I'm

also jumping okay so now the rim is ten feet up. Exactly 10 feet. So the ball is basically going down. So the physics of this, of course, is the more the ball can just go down, the greater chance it has for going in. Right. So you want to shoot a high arcing shot that drops. That drops. You don't want to just get it to crawl over. Yeah, if it just crawls over then there's, the cross section

changes. Much smaller. Right, right. I don't know if people know that. So I can take this circle and angle it, the cross section to you is smaller now. Right. So you want to get, your shot should have a high arc and come straight down. Are you thinking

about that physics when you were taking that shot? Because you had your physics class. Everything I learned you know had to do with learning the mechanics of the shot and shooting a bow and arrow because you figure out you know what the arc is all about and once you get got that figured out, you become accurate. You're a marksman. So you're a basketball marksman. You have to be. I had all the ballistics and everything worked out.

Worked it out. Ballistics. We're talking about ballistics. Charles, tell us about some ballistics. Okay. When you shoot something in the air, immediately gravity starts working on it. So no matter what you do, if you shoot something out, it's going to head down until it stops downward.

So everything about ballistics has to do with how much upward you have to put, how much sideways you have to put, and you always have to keep in track, you always have to keep track of whether or not it's going to go down and when it's going to go down. We looked up the etymology of ballistics. It's like from Ballista. Why did you know? I'm going to try to impress you that a crack team of researchers

do this. Okay. It's a catapult from the ancient times. It's a catapult. I wanted to tell you that. Sorry, dude. Sorry, dude. Don't worry. I was very impressed. I was very impressed. It's a catapult. Yeah. So, yeah. It's a, I was very impressed. I was very impressed. It's a catapult, yeah. So, yeah, it's a great word for a great idea.

Yeah, it's tremendous. So when Kareem was talking about the bow and arrow, that's right, a lot of us think that you shoot right for the target. No, you aim above the target because gravity will bring the arrow down. So when Kareem did his sky hook, what he was really doing was combining

both the downward trajectory with the upward push of his arm and the fact that he was really doing was combining both the downward trajectory with the upward push of his arm and the fact that he was 10, 11 feet in the air with the ball already. All of that he was calculating in his mind in real time. Another demonstration of why the human brain is the greatest physics computer ever yet created. Okay, why are there grapes here? Because, so here's the great thing. So Karareem was talking about the sky hook, and I thought perhaps you guys could actually demonstrate what you just talked about, which is the arc of a ball falling into the hoop.

Because what you were talking about there with him was that when the ball crawls over the hoop, there's a smaller area, right? To hit cross-sectional area. Cross-sectional area for you to aim. But when it drops into, the hoop is actually bigger. And that's what basketball players say. It's like the hoop is bigger,

and that's what they see when they're shooting. Right. So, oh, wait. Okay, so here we go. See, now, look. See, he's not all the way. Oh, there he goes. There he is. Yeah, yeah, there he is. Right, right, right.

No, no! You're paying for my dry cleaning, dude. Oh! That would be cool if the rim could move. Right, right, if the rim could move. All right, you try me. Come on. Cuz I'm gonna put my head all the way back. Hold on. All the way. Wait, wait, wait. Here we go. Slam dunk! Oh!

Oh, there you go. There we go. But to maximize that chance, I wanted to go full up, so I had the full cross-section. That's what I'm saying. Mm-hmm. These are good grapes. They really are.

I got to say, these are delicious. Mm. Mm-hmm. They really are. I got to say, these are delicious. So, so, so, so, Charles. So let me ask you. He's obviously, for his 38,000th point, he's not doing any calculation at all. It's now built into his sort of neurokinetics. That's right. And that's really

true also. Studies show clearly that at some point, repetition allows the nervous system of the brain and the spinal cord and all the ancillary nerves to have something in there even faster than thinking. So your body system works faster than you can reason it out in your head. So here's what I wondered. We got this shot, which had deadly accuracy, and, you know, the sky hook, and we don't see it anymore. Nobody does the sky hook. We have seven-footers in the NBA. They could stick their arm up. They could do the sky hook, but you never see them do what Kareem did.

And so I had to ask him where it went. Check it out. I took hook shots my whole life and I was pretty good at it. Why doesn't anyone shoot it anymore? I think the hook shot has fallen out of favor because all the kids that are learning how to play the game want to shoot three pointers.inters. They don't want the ugly two-point shot down there in the paint. The three-point shot has changed the game. That's basically what it is.

All right, so presumably the three-point shot, which is farther away. Yes. I think we looked it up at the perimeter. It's 23 feet 9 inches, something like that. In the NBA. In the NBA, right, right. Not the baby three-point shot from college. From at the perimeter. It's 23 feet 9 inches, something like that. In the NBA. In the NBA, right, right. Not the baby three-point shot from college. From college, right.

That's right. Exactly. So presumably you will take the shot if you think you can make it. Right. But it's a lower statistically likelihood shot to take. That's right. So are they calculating whether that risk is worth it? Yes.

The game has changed quite a bit. But we have numbers on this. So the average in the NBA of all shots is 45%. Yes. Nearly half. All shots. All shots. But that includes three-pointers.

Three-point shot average is 35%. Right. So is it worth it? Here's what you do. You do that calculation breakdown. A typical three-point shot will give you, average 1.05 points. Okay, that means you miss about two-thirds of the time. You get about one, but you get a little bit more. So it's about 1.05 points per shot. A field goal, a two-point shot, only averages about 1.0 to 0.9 points per shot which means that you actually have a

statistical advantage now shooting a three-point shot rather than doing an interior game and this is what i love about astrophysicists because what he just said was three beats two. Coming up, we'll try to calculate how Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would fare in today's NBA when StarTalk returns. Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're talking about the science of basketball.

Featuring my interview with NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And I had to ask him about the evolution of the game since he retired back in 1989. Check it out. in 1989. Check it out. Professional sports has been so touched by technology, by physiology, by health, by strength,

fitness. How much of that was going on in your day? I know that sounds like, gee, Grandpa, tell us what it is. I don't mean it in that spirit. We're talking about the progress of. It's like that, though, the progress of the game.

Yes. Like if you look at the game in the 1930s, they had a jump ball after every basket, no three-point shot. If you scored, if the whole team scored 30 points, that was an incredibly high-scoring game. Now you have individuals scoring 30 points, and the games are into the hundreds. The game has just really been a barometer of human development in this sport. In 1985, my team, the Lakers, probably the best team I played on, we made 93-point shots between the beginning of the season to the last game of the playoffs.

We made 93-point shots. 2015, Golden State Warriors, between the first game of the season and the last game of the playoffs, made 1,077 three-point shots. Whoa. And it's amazing. Joining us to help with this conversation about the evolution of the game is NBA analyst Jim Spanarkle. Jim.

Yeah. Jim. Thanks for being here. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. And you're not just a pretty face analyst. You were drafted by the NBA and played for the 76ers. I did, yep. Philadelphia, his hometown. There're welcome. And you're not just a pretty face analyst. You were drafted by the NBA and played for the 76ers. I did, yep. Philadelphia, his hometown. There you go. And you're currently

an analyst for the Brooklyn Nets on the Yes Network. Yeah, I've been doing the Nets for 25 years. So tell me about sort of the three-point shot over the years, just its trajectory. Ha ha. There you go. I think what's occurred more than anything, and Kareem just touched on it, is the evolution of the size and strength of the athlete, which I think goes under-noticed quite often in all sports, but particularly in the NBA. But I also think, and it's kind of a crazy concept, you know, I'll use your kind of analogy here. You know, the galaxy,

if you look at the basketball floor and that's your galaxy, the size of the stars and the planets on there are the players. They're colliding all the time. You didn't think I'd go here with this one, but. You know what, actually, I was going to say, you should leave these analogies to these guys. But if you think about it, my point where I'm going with that is part of me thinks that the speed and strength and quickness of athletes, and it applies not only to basketball, but I think if you watch a lot of hockey, these guys are so big and so fast that I think the playing surface is almost too small for the guys on the floor. Because if you think about it, I'm 6'5", and I was a guard. The average size of an NBA player now is, give or take, 6'8", 230, 235. And if you think about it, the collision of these guys with the free throw line and in has become so tight, so small, there's no room. In the old days, fundamentals won out in basketball. You had to be athletic to play the game. But fundamentals, you had to know when to go backdoor, when to do this, when to do that, and learn the game. But you had to be athletic also.

Now I say, this world, you better be very, very athletic to play professional sports now. And you still have to secondarily be fundamental at your craft. So if you look at all the ways one can score, there's foul shots. Right. Is that, are people taking about the same number of foul shots in the day? Yeah. In my hood, it was no blood, no foul. Yeah, exactly.

So you had to really get hacked before you'd call the game. If you think about the way, the three-point shot has definitely changed the game. There's no question about that, right? Because now these guys, the athletes, they're practicing those shots. And one thing I will say about pro athletes, because I'm very fortunate that not only do the NCAA tournament

and see the young kids come up, and they're starting at six, seven, eight years of age being recruited. And they're getting better and better, and that's what their craft is going to be. So they've gotten better and better at it but from the standpoint of understanding what they can do it's it's changed the dynamics totally in this particular game because in the old days if you think of basketball the what's the best shot on the floor from a percentage the layout the layout

yeah and it well i would say dunk but a Right. Okay. And usually the best number would be a one on zero. So me getting a pass from you and laying it in one on zero, right? In half court, you can do the same thing. You set your half court up to play two on one to get angles on the floor to get the basic layup. It's so congested that the game is moved away, compounded with the fact that you have athletes who are stronger, who shoot it, and have been practicing it for longer periods of time.

The dynamics just start to take over. And Curry's not a big, strong guy, by the way, when you look at him, but he is very strong. He's lean and strong. He's not muscular. He's Steph Curry. Steph Curry, who will take 10 three-point shots a game. From the parking lot. From the parking lot.

But you know what's interesting? When he first started, and if you look at his statistics, I think his numbers for the first three years were about three or four attempts per game. The next three years were three more, about six or seven. Now he's up to 10. So just in Curry's career, it's evolved. Well, here's the thing. So Kareem is over seven feet tall.

Right. He's got a sky hook. He took most of his shots near the basket. Correct. Okay. So I had to ask him, you know, you had the three-point chance. Did you ever shoot the shot? I had to ask him.

I mean, why not, right? Let's check it out. I shot 13 and I made one. So your whole career, or you got 10 years, if I did the math right, 10 years of your career was in the presence of the three-point line. Right. So you had 13 attempts. Right. And you made one.

I made one. So of your 38 billion points, 38,000 points, Three of those were a three-point shot. One three-point shot. So what the hell were you doing? What were you thinking? I'm probably going to be taken out for taking that shot. Was it, come on, guys, give me a chance here, please? No, no.

And the one shot that I made, the ball, I, like, bounced out into the corner, and I went and got it, and nobody came to guard me. Okay. So I stepped back and said, okay, I'll shoot this one. Three, and it goes! It's the first one of his life. I made it. They should have, like, bronzed that ball and gave it to you.

Oh, man. Let me tell you, that is the only three-point shot ever made in the history of the NBA where afterwards there was shame on the court. Did you see? He, like, shot that shot, and then he was just like, let me get out of here. Maybe no one will notice that I took that shot. He ran away from that shot like he had committed murder. And it's a crazy thing to notice. This is how I'm programmed in basketball.

There are 22 seconds left in the shot clock. So you're supposed to be throwing it out to the guard, and he takes that shot. Oh, right. And that's why he was doing that. No, while you were in the NBA, you overlapped with Kareem. I did, yes. By how much time was that?

Well, I played five years, so I played from 79 through 84. So I played against him for my five years. Oh, okay, yeah, because he's active that whole time. Magic Johnson as well? Magic Johnson as well, yeah. So he was more of a contemporary. Who's better, Magic Johnson or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Two different positions.

Oh, man. You knew he was going to give that answer. You knew he was going to give that answer. I know. You knew he was going to give that answer. I'll tell you something a lot of people don't think about, and I can say this from experience. When you're playing against these guys and they are so good, and being 6'5", I'm playing against guys 6'7", whatever, and you're taking your shot,

if there's a thought in your mind that that shot can get blocked, what does it do to your confidence? You hesitate a split second, and you're done. And it gets blocked. Exactly. So all the scientific gravity and everything you do doesn't come into play. I don't get the shot off, and it's going behind me, right? Right.

But if you think about Kareem, this is why I give the advantages to the smaller guys, like the Michael Jordans of the world. Kareem is shooting that shot. Small, he's 6'6", or 6'5". Right, exactly. And if you saw one of those. The little dudes. The little guys, yeah.

The tiny guys. There was one piece where Kareem was shooting his skyhook, and he was speaking about it. That was Caldwell Jones for the 76ers who was guarding him. He was a seven-footer. Kareem had the hand way up here, and Caldwell at seven feet looked like he was about 5'5". So my point being that when you're shooting a shot,

and you know it's not going to get blocked, you're going to be a whole lot better than the guy who's worried about getting his shot blocked. Well, I asked Kareem, because he's the leading scorer of the NBA. Yeah, sure. I asked him, at his peak, how would he do competing today? Yeah. That's a fair question, but I'll just check it out.

I'd be able to play in today's game. I don't think somebody from the 30s could play in today's game. Okay, so you're near enough in the past to sort of figure out a way to get in there. Yeah, I could get in there. Because I still have skills that would translate today and be useful. Scoring near the basket. Now today, guys, your height are 60 pounds heavier than you were, but it wouldn't have been hard

to just put more muscle on you today, and that's what they do. I'd still be competitive today, because even though I didn't have that kind of muscle, my quickness and agility compensated. Speed kills. Yeah. In a good way, on the court.

On the court, yeah. What? Why you, what, what, what? I don't think Kareem really understands that he's probably not, like, a little speedy guy. Like, he... He thought he was fast. Yeah, but he's, like, seven feet.

He's a giant. You can only be as fast as a seven-foot person can be right what you're saying? Yeah, so I think he has a wrong self perception When you're seven feet you move like this Now here's the thing There's a physical limit to how fast really large things can be okay, because There's a physical limit to how fast really large things can be. Okay? Because if I want to say I want to scratch my head with my hand.

Right. If my hand is so long that the electromagnetic impulses take 10 seconds to get from the tip of my finger to my brain, I'll say I want to scratch my head. My finger doesn't even get the signal till 10 seconds. And then I bring my hand up, scratch my head, and I'm good. Nerve impulses travel up to 286 miles per hour in the human body. It doesn't matter whether you're six foot three or seven foot three. Those impulses are going to move fast enough to make sure you can scratch your head. No, I got you. That's correct. Wait, wait, wait, wait. No, I'm not. Your size has... No, I got you. That's correct. Size has... Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Wait, Charles. No, Charles. Charles, I'm making a different point. No, I'm just making... I'm just making an astrophysical point. Can you have a life form the size of an entire galaxy? This is the point.

These are serious questions when we search for life in the universe. And one of the constraints on that is it takes light 100,000 years to cross the galaxy. And that's the fastest thing we know. So a is it takes light 100,000 years to cross the galaxy. And that's the fastest thing we know. So a life form that's 100,000 light years across, if it wants to scratch its head, it can't do it any faster than it takes light to move 100,000 years. So it has to move slower.

That's my point. No, that's it. I get it. So now with people, you're saying it moves fast enough so seven-footer, five-footer shouldn't make much of a difference. Makes no difference whatsoever on the basketball court. A big man like Jim can move just as fast as a little man like me, possibly faster. Did you move fast? Don't use this man as an example of how fast you could have moved.

Were you as fast as the little guys? No. Exactly. And that's my whole point about Kareem. But it's not because his nerves didn't have to travel faster or slower or longer. Then what's the reason? It was a matter of-

I was pigeon-toed, knock-kneed, and slow. And couldn't jump. Basically, what Jim was saying was like, look man, I was white. Boy, did I ever set you up for that one. All right. So. Well, coming up, we're going to talk about the physics of snaring rebounds

and sinking bank shots when StarTalk returns. Welcome back to Star Talk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're exploring the physics of basketball featuring my interview with NBA All-Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Check it out. A rebound in basketball, you have to get a sense of how the thing is going to bounce before the thing makes that bounce. So that you can be in the right place at the right time. What's going through your head when you, how many rebounds? Was it a billion? I think 17,000.

17,000 rebounds. The angle in equals the angle out. So if a shot comes from this angle at the basket, the probability is it's going to take the same angle coming off the other side. By the way, that's a law. It's a law of optics. The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Right, and it's like a mirror.

The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Right, and it's like a mirror. So you have to understand the angle that's going to come off and then the distance from the rim and backboard that you need to be at to have the optimum opportunity to collect the rebound. Plus 101-inch wingspan. Well, it helps. The ability to anticipate is... So we can spend 10 minutes, you telling me,

I calculate the angle, but then really I just reach out and grab the ball. No, some people just stand there. You've got to move, but... So you were particularly potent because you basically combined your 100 100 inch wingspan with the knowledge of angle of incidence and angle of reflection right and uh what we call hops what we call hops that was a new word for me i In my day, I don't know that I use that word. Hops.

Hops is, that's your vertical. Vertical? Yeah, basically. Hang time, vertical? Yeah, yo. Bro got hops. Like, yeah, you can get up. That's when you play above the rim. You got hops, you know? He just told me a little bit about his game. Oh!

You are an Aleeper. No, no, I just, when I i grew up we didn't have that word we didn't use that word yeah that's called this but i but i could jump all right no i could i could i could dunk the ball in ninth grade so you had hops that's all there is to it yeah so you know yeah i did not have hops yes so do you think he got the rebounds because he's calculating angle of incidence and angle of reflection? Yes. Or because he has a 101-inch wingspan?

Yes. Because you know what? Here's the deal. I asked, while he said that, I asked for a gun. Where did you get this? I always carry it. Because I am that insecure. But no, seriously, check this out.

Check this out. Look at this. Look at this. Okay. All right. This is a 101-inch wingspan. This is... So if a ball comes anywhere...

Anywhere. Anywhere. Well, that's arm to arm, so it would be half of that. There you go. Yes, exactly. Okay. Wait, sorry. would be half of that. There you go. Yes, exactly. Okay. Wait, sorry. Uh-oh.

I just broke your arms. I broke... Oh, oh, snap. Bring out the Viagra. Yeah, okay. There you go. All right, so there you go. So the rebound comes, his arm just wherever. Right.

So now it's not just that. It's the full... You get like a circle out of that. That's right full, you get a, like a circle out of that. That's right. Right. And this could be a new unit of measurement, the Kareems. Like we are 6,000 Kareems from mid-town. So how many Kareems to the moon?

Right, right, okay, all right. Right. I'll work on that. Chuck, I mean, Charles, we got to, like... 238,000 times 5,280 divided by 101 times 12. He's absolutely right! Yeah, that's right. That's right.

238,000 is the miles to the moon. And you divide that out by the feet and inches, and you do it. Right. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Same here. But, you know. So, Jim, do you, it's both, I guess, right?

Yeah, I think size matters. I mean, you know, obviously, if you're seven, excuse mean, obviously, if you're 7'2". You know, that's not what you want to say after I just put away a tape measure. Good point. But yes, I mean, when you think about it, there's a lot of room for him just to be grabbing rebounds because he's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, right? But if you think of guys like in the old days, Dennis Rodman, who was 6'8", one of the best rebounders. Charles Barkley, one of the best rebounders. Charles Barkley's about 6'6", if he's that. These guys understood positioning.

I was going to say, that's because rebound's about position. And the other thing in terms of watching the basketball, where it's going to hit, if you watch a typical game, it's about, and don't quote me totally on this, but if you shoot the ball from the left side of the floor and you miss your shot, about 70-ish percent of the time, where's that ball going to end up going? It's going to go to the right side of the floor. So if I'm a rebounder and I'm thinking about rebounding

and I'm in the middle of the floor and a shot's coming from the left wing... You quickly run to the other side of the... Just to play the odds. Right, right. It's all physics. It really is. So there's not just the rebound. I the... Just to play the odds. Right, right. It's all physics. It really is. So there's not just the rebound.

I asked Kareem about the bank shot. Because my day, we took bank shots. They had a pretty high percentage. Now you never see bank shots at all. I just asked him about this. Let's check it out. I've done some math on the backboard. And there are many trajectories bouncing off the

backboard that get it into the basket more so than just going straight for the basket right and so it almost feels like anyone hitting the ball off the backboard that that's a lesser shot even though it counts the same on the scoreboard. Do you feel like that's going on out there? Not really. Making bank shots can be very difficult. So there are certain times when it helps you because it raises the target. When you're shooting it off the backboard, it raises the target, so it makes it more difficult to block that shot.

Oh. I hadn't thought about that. So the fact that you hit the backboard first and the backboard is higher than the rim... Yes. ...meant the shot went higher to begin with. Went higher to begin with, and it avoids the arc of the defender's reach.

So, Jim, is there... Can you think of an optimum angle for a bank shot? Because when I'm shooting crumbled paper into the office trash, if the trash is in the corner, I'm making it every time off the wall, right? And so I'm thinking, this is, why aren't more people shooting bank shots today? Some of them are. Some of them do shoot it. The guy with the nets, Brooke Lopez, for example, a seven-footer, has a great bank shot, and he can shoot it from 15 feet, 18 feet, almost to the three-point line efficiently.

I think where it's become a lost art, though, is when we were playing the game, we were putting the ball on the floor, dribble, dribble, dribble, and you go to the angles, right, an extended layup, if you will, that's the best angle to shoot a bank shot. But we were putting the ball on the floor to go by people. The three-point shot didn't exist, so you had to understand that, okay, now I have this old-fashioned pull-up jump shot, the mid-range game. That's kind of a lost art. And that's where the bank shot comes into play, I think, a lot. So, because I keep thinking, once you're, the same point about the cross-sectional area,

a bank shot, just like he said, you're coming in higher above the rim. And so, you do these measurements. You know, the great thing about a bank shot, it's like pool.

If you hit that spot, it's going to go in. That's all there is to it. If you hit the spot on the backboard, it's going to go in. Well, did you play in Philly? Oh, you know I did no I don't know you did Oh, let me tell you something. No, I don't know you do. Yes. I did wait a minute No, I don't know if you did it's called a handshake now. He's a much larger player

Okay, so what I want to do is I want to put my I want to put my leg on them I want to hand check them right here. Okay., we have an actual basketball player here. Jim, come on. Come on, Jim, Jim, come on. I'm not doing it. I am going to watch my hand straight. So how much were you body checked? I mean, what could you get away with? Well, you could get away with all of that. Really?

But then it becomes everybody thinks that it's about the upper body. So I want to just keep my legs bent a little bit so now I can move you. He's not playing. Chuck, help me double team. Right, so this is the double team. Like this, like this.

Anyway, so now... No, seriously. It's too intimate for me. This is what we call the schoolyard sexual defense. What you do is you make the guy very uncomfortable you get up with him like this you go. So you like that Was your best shot I could shoot a jump shot pretty well. Yeah? Yeah. One hit? What was it?

The set shot that you used to do. Not the set shot. So, Charles, what was your best shot? The free throw. Coming up, NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reveals his true dream when StarTalk returns. And Jim, thanks for coming. You bet. All right.

We'll see you in a bit. OK. Welcome back to StarTalk. We're featuring my interview with NBA all-time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And he has had some memorable pop culture cameos. Here he is taking on Bruce Lee in Game of Death. Yes!

Woo! Yes! Whoa! Love that! And of course his role in that over the top comedy. Oh, airplane. Airplane! So I had to ask him what would his dream cameo role be? Check it out.

I always wanted to be in Star Wars and be one of some kind of creature that, you know, like Chewbacca. I mean, that should have been my role. Is this on your tombstone? I always wanted to beat Chewbacca. No. Forget the basketball.

Forget Chewbacca shit. I'm sorry. Wow. You know, that may explain why every time he dunked a basketball, he went... So, Charles, what is the Wookiee planet like? The Wookiee home planet is a forested world. Does it have normal gravity? Yes. Except it's slightly stronger than that of Earth,

which is why the Wookiees evolved to be larger and stronger. Okay, so but basketball, if the gravity is about the same, basketball would not be much different. Absolutely identical. Yeah. I would say probably the Wookiees used a heavier ball because they're so much stronger than humans. But as well you know, there is this thing we call the Copernican principle, which suggests that the laws of physics here on Earth are the same anywhere else in the universe. And therefore, if they were playing round ball in the Wookiee home world somewhere, I'm sure Chewbacca would have to box out

just like Kareem did back in the day. This is the Copernican principle of basketball. Well, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had a question for me about space and the universe itself. Here's Kareem's cosmic query. Check it out. Why do all the planets circle the sun on the same plane? It's not only that. They also go in the same direction around the sun. Not only the same plane, but the same direction.

And this question came up in the 1700s and Immanuel Kant, great philosopher, posed that question and then he posed an answer for it. And it turned out to be correct. So you have a gas cloud from which all of this formed. And we know this because you can look out in the galaxy and you see these pockets of gas forming things within them. So the gas cloud is usually very big and diffuse. When it's that diffuse, it's not forming anything. It's got to get a little more concentrated.

Its internal gravity pulls it in. In the center, you're going to form the star In the surroundings you can still have pockets of condensation, but they're not going to form the star gonna form like lower-mass objects Like planets, but as this thing collapses it actually spins faster and faster It's no different from an ice skater that has extended arms. You bring them in and then they start spinning faster and faster. So as this spins faster and faster, the midplane cannot continue to collapse inside because the centrifugal forces

are preventing it. Whereas top and bottom, not a problem. It just collapses. But at the mid-plane, it tries to collapse in an incant and it maintains an orbit around it. So everything that collapsed is in a flattened disk in orbit in the same direction around the host star. So good question. Thank you. So he's thinking about this. That is awesome, yeah. The dude's thinking about this.

That is awesome, yeah. The dude is thinking about this. So the spinning cloud, you know, if this were an astrophysical cloud, this may be the first time a basketball has ever been referenced this way, I'm thinking, in all the universe. So you have a spinning gas cloud, but it's spinning like with an axis, basically. And so it can collapse top to bottom, but it just can't collapse inward. And so the whole thing ends up flat. That's all there is to it. Yep.

And you've got a flattened system. So our entire galaxy is flat. Right. So we've got supermassive black hole in the middle. Star systems in orbit around it. Everybody's orbiting in the same direction, and our galaxy is so flat, it is flatter than a flapjack. Flatter than a flapjack.

Yeah, it's more like a crepe, actually. Oh. The ratio between the thickness and the width is about 100 to one. 100 to one. So if you have a super thin crust pizza that's like a third of an inch thick, then your pizza would have to be 35 inches across.

Yeah. Coming up, NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar drops some wisdom about the value of sports when StarTalk returns. Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my interview with one of the sport's all-time greats, NBA superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And Kareem also deeply values science and society. And he's helping to share some of that outlook with the next generation. Check it out.

I have a foundation that promotes STEM education. Oh! So it's called Camp Skyhook. We send kids to a camp and they do STEM experiments, observing the night sky. There's animals up there. There's streams and everything. They check out the watershed and do different things related to science, technology, engineering, and math. And we do this so that they have an idea of where the good jobs are going to be in the 21st century. So, Charles, did you hear what the mission statement is? No.

The mission statement is give kids a shot that can't be blocked. Oh, I love that. That's awesome. That's perfect. All I know is with that mission statement, there's at least one kid at Camp Skyhook who is very disappointed that he is not at a basketball camp. I can't believe I'm going to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's

Skyhook camp, and it's just math class. But the point that we talked about earlier in the show is that what Kareem is saying with Camp Skyhook and other projects like this is that math and science can be just as beautiful as a beautiful basketball game. Well, we've been breaking down the science of basketball tonight. But, of course, sports is much more than just the physics of the game. And so I asked Kareem about the true value of sports.

Check it out. Would you have any regrets if professional sports became all about the science and less about the personal drive? Well, I think sports teaches young people a lot of social skills that are really valuable. Leadership skills, conflict resolution, the discipline. So I think there's a lot there in sports that has value.

Also knowing how to fail. Yeah, and dealing with failure and improving and coming back and doing it right the next time. Yeah, not only how to win, but how to fail. Yeah, and that happens in science too. For every great discovery, there are hundreds of failures. And the press never talks about those. No, but that's okay.

With any kind of endeavor, there is success and there's failure. Perhaps in sports, it might be the best way to convey to people that it's really okay to fail, because that's not actually failure. When I think about Kareem, I think about, yes, we have a scholar, we have an athlete, not just an ordinary athlete, one of the greatest there ever was. And what happens in school? Well, you take a class in this topic, and then a class in that topic, and then a class in this other topic and there's a book

and all of our educational trajectory is stove piped you got to go into a stove pipe to learn that this is biology oh but it's not this is that but not this other thing and nature and the world does not divide itself up that way. There's no understanding of biology without chemistry. And there's no understanding of chemistry without physics. And physics manifests in all of these sports. So for people to say, I want to learn this, but I don't want to learn that, they are compartmentalizing their knowledge and their

access to what nature actually is. So for me, learning about as much as you possibly can empowers you to find cross-pollinated connections that maybe someone else never even dreamt of. Where in the case of Kareem Jabbar, it improved his game because he knew a little bit of physics. So for me, as an academic, it's not about being pigeonholed. It's about how much of this world you can consume. And what comes out the other side is brand new insights into how this world works. And you can only be a better person, a better competitor, a better lover, a better citizen, a better member of your species for having done so. You had me

at lover. And that is the cosmic perspective. You've been watching StarTalk. And I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I want to thank Chuck Nice, Charles Liu,

and as always, I bid you to keep looking up!