What if basketball was reimagined to include everyone — not just the tall? In this thought-provoking and hilarious conversation, Doug O’Brien sits down with his brother Tim O’Brien to explore an unconventional idea: creating a height budget for basketball.

They dive into:

🏀 How height bias shapes sports and opportunity ⚖️ The “total height budget” concept that could make basketball more inclusive

🧠 What this says about how we structure competition and fairness in life 💡 How this parallels modeling excellence in NLP — and what coaches can learn from it It’s a light-hearted yet deeply insightful talk on innovation, fairness, and thinking differently.

0:00 Introduction – Basketball and brotherly rivalry

1:00 Why height matters more than skill in modern basketball

3:00 The idea: integrating basketball by height 5:00 Explaining the “total height budget”

7:00 How teams could balance tall and short players

9:00 Real-world examples from the NBA and high school sports

11:00 What coaches can learn about fairness and innovation

13:00 Modeling athletic excellence – the NLP connection

15:00 The value of diversity in skill and size

17:00 Closing thoughts – opening up the game to everyone

To read an artilce on this subject by Dr. Tim O'Brien, go here: https://ericksonian.com/height-budget-for-bball-by-e-timothy-obrien-phd

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