Basketball is one of those sports that normally makes height more important than other attributes. Unfortunately, that has always been the way that people think, and it doesn’t seem like that’s changing anytime soon. This thought process has led to a very good question, can short girls be good at basketball?
The answer is yes. In fact, short girls might actually be at an advantage due to their speed and agility compared to the opposition. The only true downside that you’d experience is shooting when contested because you can’t go over the top of defenders. You might also struggle a little on defense because you aren’t able to utilize your strength as much as other bigger players. Still though, this doesn’t mean that you can’t be impactful as a shorter player on the basketball court.
There’s definitely more to discuss here when talking about short girls being potentially good at basketball. Let’s keep on diving deeper into this.
Speed Is Key
If you’re a shorter girl that is thinking about playing some basketball, you might be worried about your height. Luckily, speed is the area that you’ll have an advantage in. Most players who are taller than you might not be as quick on their feet, but if you’re shorter, you can fly around them at that speed. When you are faster than your opponent, you can easily drive past them with the ball in your hand or run back on defense to avoid giving up many transition buckets. At first glance, you might not think speed is all that important, but there are many situations where you can flash that quickness.
Eventually, there will be people that might be as fast as you. However, it still wouldn’t completely take you out of the game. We all got to see how impactful Isiah Thomas was on the Boston Celtics despite his height being a little underwhelming. His speed always had him flying around the court and juking out defenders left and right.
Shooting Over Defenders Might Be Tough
One of the biggest downsides is that you can’t shoot over defenders as easily. This leads to some problems when it comes to scoring the basketball, because you might feel contested when a taller player won’t feel that pressure at all. Let’s say you get a pass behind the three-point line and are wide open, you might hesitate more than a taller player because a defender can use aa good angle and block your shot due to the height difference. If you were a taller player, you’d be able to shoot over their outstretched arms.
Offensively, this is what most people see as the largest problem. There is a way past this though, and that’s to shoot with confidence. Confidence when shooting is the biggest thing for a shorter player. If you keep feeling the pressure of that contest from the opponent, you’ll keep passing up shots and make it very hard for you to score consistently points. Shooting despite the pressure can keep you involved and force the defense to keep an eye on you.
Defense Is A Problem
Past everything though, defense is the largest concern for a shorter player to think about. When you’re playing defense as an undersized player, your opponent can very easily just shoot the basketball right over your head, not even feeling your arm try to contest like how you would feel their pressure the other way around. This can make you feel like a liability on the defensive end and would force opponents to try and match up with you so that they can shoot over the top.
If for whatever reason they don’t want to shoot, they can use their matchup advantage to back you down in the paint and use their strength to overpower you down low to score easy layups. It feels like it won’t matter where you are defensively, opposing players might go straight at you and force you off the floor.
Low Center Of Gravity
The usual advantage besides speed that shorter players can obtain is a low center of gravity. They can get great balance to combine with their speed and agility, creating a problem offensively. As much as you might feel useless defensively, you might be able to generate even more success offensively to even out your game. Most people claim that having a low center of gravity can help keep you on the court more as a shorter player, both offensively and defensively. So, keep that in mind as you battle it out.
The low center of gravity is also reported to help with your jump shot if you’re able to harness it. Once you understand how you are able to operate with that low center of gravity, creating a solid jump shot that goes well with it can make it hard to defend against you.
It’s Not Impossible
Now that we’ve talked about everything, the most important thing that you need to understand is that it’s not impossible to play basketball as a short girl, or a shorter player in general. Height might be an important part of the game, but it’s definitely not the only thing that you need to be good at in order to succeed. Shorter players might be forced to put more effort into their training to ensure that they can dominate the areas they can control, but it’s absolutely possible. The worst thing that you can do is believe it’s impossible to be effective due to your height.
Thomas, the Celtics superstar, had his own haters and doubters when he first started playing college basketball. CJ McCollum was questioned as well during his high school years. Still, neither of them gave up despite their disadvantages. They kept on improving their overall game and became two of the best scorers that basketball has seen in recent memory. Again, there’s always areas to improve, tall or short.