Baylor’s Griner would get dunked on in the NBA – often

Every once in a while, there’s a random story that comes across the sports wire that just catches my eye.

Mark down last Wednesday as one of those days.

That’s because Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said publicly on that day that he is considering using a second-round draft pick in June’s NBA Draft on Baylor superstar post player Brittney Griner – a selection that would make the Lady Bear the first-ever woman to be drafted into the NBA ranks.

Cuban went a step further and added that even if he doesn’t draft Griner, the team would welcome her for a try-out for the organization’s summer league or developmental league squads.

Wait a minute.

Say what?

C’mon, Mr. Cuban, both you and I know that Griner couldn’t hold a candle to NBA bigs.

This smells like a marketing ploy to me – an attempt to lift ticket sales in otherwise unwatched developmental games, no?

Sarcasm aside, there is no disputing that Griner is the best collegiate post player since Lisa Leslie or Sylvia Fowles.

Her post skills are refined – she scores 24 points per game and shoots 60 percent from the field for Baylor.

Critics say that she scores because she’s the biggest kid on the floor, but I beg to differ. Griner shoots 75 percent from the free throw line, which proves that she has touch and has true basketball skill besides from gargantuan height.

With that said, I’d even be willing to go so far as to make the claim that Griner may already be the best women’s basketball player in the world.

She will go into the WNBA following the season and will dominate immediately.

Griner will be an All-Star in her first season and she will likely lead the Phoenix Mercury (the team expected to take her in the WNBA Draft) to the playoffs and beyond.

But let’s not get too crazy, nor carried away with these feats and let’s shed a little bit of perspective onto what would happen if Griner would play NBA ball.

She would get dunked on.

Early and often.

For starters, the numbers just don’t add up.

They don’t add up in neither size, nor skill for the Baylor All-American.

Griner is 6-feet, 8-inches.

Wonderful.

But with Baylor, the average post player she faced in the Big 12 Conference was 6-feet, 3-inches.

Kansas State’s post is just 5-feet, 11-inches. Texas Tech’s was just 6-feet flat.

But guess what? In the NBA, every post player would be at least Griner’s height and most would be several inches taller.

These players would have the ability to alter – if not block – Griner’s shots on the offensive end of the floor.

They would also be able to pin the Lady Bears’ All-American on the block and force her to play defense against players her own size – something she has never done in her entire collegiate career.

It’s one thing to be the only big fish in a small pond.

It’s entirely another when you’re just a normal sized fish in a large pond.

So I can hear the women’s basketball enthusiast yelling in my ear now that Griner has hops and would be able to out-jump the NBA guys.

Does she really have true “hops,” though?

Griner is close to 7-feet tall, has a gi-normous wingspan, but yet needs a Herculean effort to dunk the basketball.

You want real hops?

Let’s talk about Dwight Howard – whom Griner would have to defend at the NBA level.

The Los Angeles Lakers’ standout can dunk a 12-foot rim with ease. That’s a whole two feet higher than the league’s standard 10-foot mark. He plays several feet about the rim, while Griner plays just inches above the cylinder.

Or how about we talk about Nate Robinson, who isn’t even 6-feet tall, but who can get his entire arm into the rim.

That’s All-World hops.

What Griner has is All-World size with decent jumping ability.

Size in height is one thing, but size in strength is another.

Baylor’s official athletic website does not list an official weight for Griner.

Doing a little Google research, I’ve found that most websites list the forward between 200-210 pounds.

Again, this would present an obvious mismatch for the Lady Bear.

In the NBA, Griner would give up weight and strength to virtually every player she faced.

Most NBA posts are 240-260 pounds.

Even the so-called “skinny” ones like Anthony Davis weigh 220.

Taking a constant beating from bigger, faster and stronger players would wear on Griner’s skillset.

When tired, she wouldn’t be able to perform at the best of her ability.

When not performing at the best of her ability, she would be a post player incapable of making an NBA roster.

I’m all for equality in the workplace and I’m all for genders being equal.

But a spade is a spade.

If Brittney Griner played in the NBA, she would get dunked on.

Mark Cuban may do whatever he wishes with his basketball team, but this just smells like a marketing ploy and a scheme to sell tickets to me.

He’s plenty smart enough to know this wouldn’t work.