When Paul Mokeski traveled to China several years ago to teach a month-long basketball clinic, he says he couldn’t help but feel like Godzilla. For the 7ft former NBA center, who played 12 years in the league, many of them on a Milwaukee Bucks team that battled Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals, it was a familiar feeling. People would come out of stores and point as if they were seeing a giant from a storybook. “That’s all part of the gig when you’re as tall as I am,” says Mokeski.
For decades, when it came to the NBA, height was king. And while that trend has diminished some, thanks to players like Steph Curry and his “small ball” Golden State Warriors team, players of Mokeski’s stature are hardly a rarity in the NBA. But to be 7ft in the wider world is a different matter. Some estimates show that there are fewer than 3,000 seven-footers in the entire world. And that means for people like Mokeski, life is often defined by being super visible. “I don’t know any other way,” he says with a laugh.
Mokeski’s father was 6ft 4in and his mother was 6ft. By the time he was approaching his teens in seventh grade, Mokeski was 6ft. By eighth grade, he was 6ft 2in and by his senior year in high school, he had topped out at 7ft. He was also rather skinny, only weighing about 200lbs as a senior. And while his height helped his basketball career, it also made him the target of “tons of stares and stupid questions my whole life”. Mokeski says that he was asked about 20 times a day for decades, “How tall are you?” The question came from old ladies, small children – anyone.
“When you’re in high school,” the 67-year-old says, “and you’re skinny and you have acne and frizzy hair – as a regular teenager, you’re self-conscious. But I was getting stares everywhere I went. To this day, I don’t like lines, I don’t like crowds. Because that’s where the stares come from.”
One of the most annoying interactions, he says, is when someone asks him how tall he is and he responds, “7ft.” And they shoot back, “No, you’re not!” At times his friends would answer for him, saying he was 5ft 10in or 8ft, because they, too, tired of the questions. Today, his wife Linda bears the brunt of the asinine queries.
“I’ve been married for 43 years,” Mokeski says. “Here’s another thing that happens – I could be standing next to my wife at a party and someone will start talking to her and ask, ‘How tall is he? Do you guys sleep on a regular bed?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m right here! I can hear you. I’m not a mannequin!’”
When you’re that tall, life can feel repetitive, too. “Here’s another thing,” he says. “People say, ‘Man, you’re tall.’ Yeah! Tell me something I don’t know!” Or maybe a flight attendant will tell him to watch his head when he’s getting on a plane, as if he’d never thought of that before.
One of Mokeski’s former opponents, the 7ft 1in Celtics center Robert Parish, knows the benefits and downsides of being especially tall. “My line of sight is enhanced,” Parish says. “I can also reach things most people can’t, my stride and reach give me an advantage when playing racquetball and it’s easier to ignore people who are knuckleheads!” But the cons, Parish says, include “accommodations, doorways, beds, finding clothes long enough, vehicles, shoes and my personal pet peeve: a shortage of tall women!”
There are also more serious problems. As Mokeski, whose playing weight was 255lb, gets older, carrying such a big frame is hard work. He’s had half-a-dozen foot surgeries, a knee replacement, a hip replacement and screws put into his size 15 feet. “It catches up with you,” he says, adding that it can be hard to find replacement knee or hip joints to fit someone of his size. Not to mention airplane seats or even buying clothes. “The human body is not made to be this tall,” he says. But his height also gave him a tremendous life, from a dozen years in the pros to a chance to see the world as a coach and player. Still, though, if he was 6ft 2in, he thinks he might have had a better shot at a head coaching job in the NBA. But former centers like him, Patrick Ewing or Jack Sikma don’t get as many looks as former point guards do.
“The perception, it seems, is that big guys can’t be head coaches,” he says. Mokeski has worked as an assistant for teams like the Charlotte Bobcats and coached for 25 years in various leagues.
When Mokeski talks to other tall guys, the wear and tear is mentioned. From the rudimentary Chuck Taylor shoes he and his peers wore in the 1980s to the injuries guys like Sam Bowie, Bill Walton and others sustained. As he gets older, Mokeski can’t help but notice when a tall guys passes away. He often notes the cause of death, too. From Darryl Dawkins and Moses Malone to Earl Cureton, Wilt Chamberlain and Jack Haley, all of whom died of heart-related issues. “What happens with tall guys like me who played in the NBA,” he says, “we notice tall former guys who have passed away and how they passed away. Yeah, it’s a concern. I talk about that with doctors.”
Mokeski mentions Scot Pollard, the 6ft 11in former center who played from 1997 to 2008 and who has been vocal on social media of late after a heart transplant. The two centers are also University of Kansas alums and Mokeski is watching Pollard recuperate from afar. “I had a friend a few years ago whose brother needed a heart transplant,” Mokeski adds. “He was 6ft 9in and was waiting for the right sized heart and he never found it.”
Then there’s players who dwarf even Mokeski. Shawn Bradley, who played in the NBA for more than a decade, is 7ft 6in and used to talk about things he noticed due to his height, including the fact that the tops of most people’s refrigerators are dirty. Mokeski also coached Bradley, who was paralyzed after he was hit by a car in 2021, when they were both in Dallas with the Mavericks. He was there when the franchise tried to add some 30lb to Bradley’s frame, but it only hindered his game because Bradley wasn’t meant to be heavier. And while Mokeski is tall, Bradley stood a full half-foot taller. “It freaks me out at 7ft when somebody’s taller than me,” he says. “You know, 6ft 7in, 6ft 8in that’s a different world than 6ft 11in, 7ft and that’s a different world than 7ft 4in or 7ft 5in.”
The most prominent seven-footer in today’s NBA is the prodigy that is Victor Wembanyama, who is listed at 7ft 4in. Whereas Mokeski might be worried about the San Antonio Spurs phenom’s future, he finds himself much less so than for players in the past like Bowie, Greg Odin or Yao Ming. After seeing countless big men see their careers cut short due to injury, Wembanyama, his team and the entire NBA are much more conscientious about his workout and physical maintenance. “When you look at his training,” Mokeski says, “he’s taken it to the extreme – yoga, stretching and all that. We didn’t do that stuff – I wish we did. We did 15 jumping jacks and it was, ‘Let’s go play!’”
Mokeski, who is now also a podcaster as well as a former scout, says he doesn’t have his head turned too quickly these days. Nevertheless, he’s impressed by the Frenchman. He’s a “game changer,” Mokeski says, and the last person he thought that about was LeBron James. But while Mokeski knows Wembanyama will likely have health issues related to his height when he gets older, it won’t be as bad as it’s been for others. “He’s going to have a lot less trouble because of the training and knowledge around it,” Mokeski says. “I’m less concerned about someone like him now than, say, 25 years ago. He’s going to be a lot better off than me.”
So what does Mokeski appreciate most about having lived a life as one of the world’s few seven-footers? “Well,” says Mokeski, a father of two sons – a 6ft 8in police officer and a 7ft special responder for Caesars Palace in Las Vegas – “you’re talking to an old man now whose body is broken down. So, what I love most is getting in the hot tub! But in my younger years, I loved that it made me unique. It allowed me to play 12 years in the NBA, to coach at every level and to travel to something like 42 countries. My skills and toughness helped but overall my height made me stay in the league, which gave me the life I have now.”
