Basketball Physics, with NBA Legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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. So let's do this.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. My co-hosts, comedian Chuck Nice.

• 0:48Charles Liu?

  How are ya?

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

• 0:53Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very nice. And also joining me is a friend and colleague, Charles Liu. Charles!

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's an astrophysicist with the City University of New York at Staten Island. Longtime friend of the show. And why do we have another astrophysicist on a show about basketball? Because Charles has a certain sort of geek expertise in so many different things. And you look, you open a portfolio, and we went down and basketball was in the portfolio.

• 1:20Charles Liu?

  Of course. I am in parabolic orbit over this show. See, he really is an astrophysicist. I cannot wait.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're gonna help us sort of break down the physics of the game?

• 1:31Charles Liu?

  What a wonderful game.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I only be able to take it so far because we both know physics, but you were totally geeked out by it.

• 1:38Charles Liu?

  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.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because awesomeness knows no bounds.

• 1:50Charles Liu?

  None.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is NBA all-time leading scorer. All time.

• 1:58Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  38,387 points.

• 2:03Charles Liu?

  Wow.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But did you know he's also a scholar? Kareem is a prolific cultural columnist and a bestselling author. I don't know if you knew that.

• 2:15Charles Liu?

  No wonder.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know all that.

• 2:16Charles Liu?

  No wonder you like him.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I asked him about that, about that bookish background. So let's check it out, see what happens.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You may be like the smartest professional player in any sport that there ever was.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  I don't know about that.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think what it all started was, is 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 Third Avenue.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the old days, yeah. There are no bookstores anymore.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Okay, so I remember going down, 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 wanna know something about and I, that's how, I guess I got to be, what do they call it, bookish.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, these are the seeds ready to sprout when you were done with basketball.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's written 12 books.

• 3:26Charles Liu?

  12, wow.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  12 books. He was a regular columnist for Time Magazine on all topics really ever surrounding religion, race and society and so I, I just thought this was, this is 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.

• 3:57Charles Liu?

  He's a failure, is what you're trying to tell me. 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.

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause that's a stereotype.

• 4:12Charles Liu?

  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. 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.

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Chuck Nice?

  Uh, no. I'm sorry, I'm, you know, I just gotta take issue with that. Because, uh, by the way, there are some very smart jocks, but there are some very dumb jocks too. I'm sorry, there are.

• 4:49Charles Liu?

  But look, there are some very smart astrophysicists and very dumb astrophysicists.

• 4:54Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, Chuck, he's, he's right, he's kind of, he's a little bit right about that, I'm just saying.

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  Seriously.

• 5:17Charles Liu?

  Come on.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying, just saying. So this is just evidence that, you know, we pigeonhole people. We, we, we don't, we don't want them to be more than the one thing they're good at. And I don't really understand that. I, I, I don't.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  Because the truth of the matter is, uh, we can't handle people having it all.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why, why not?

• 5:39Chuck Nice?

  You know what I mean? Seriously. Like, you don't want somebody who is mentally...

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why we laugh at famous people who trip on something in the street.

• 5:44Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something bad has gotta happen to some...

• 5:46Chuck Nice?

  Because you don't want somebody who is mentally and physically superior. You don't want somebody to have it all.

• 5:52Charles Liu?

  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.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 6:03Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. So now, I wanna show y'all a picture of Chuck Liu as a weightlifting champion.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I missed that.

• 6:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, 'cause it don't exist.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I thought we had a picture.

• 6:19Charles Liu?

  Only with my mind, Chuck.

• 6:23Chuck Nice?

  So...

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Kareem, as a basketball player, was most famous for perfecting this accurate deadly shot called the skyhook. Indefensible. Indefensible. So, I had to just ask him about his high-flying skyhook. 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 skyhook, your hand at fully extended, it's gotta be like eight or nine feet in the air. I mean, did they measure this?

• 7:09Speaker 02

  When I shot the skyhook, my hand was about between 10 feet and 11 feet in the air.

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're also jumping.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm also jumping.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, now, the rim is 10 feet up.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Exactly 10 feet.

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Right. So, you want to shoot a high arcing shot that drops.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That drops.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  You don't want to just get it to crawl over.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if it just crawls over, then there's, the cross-section changes.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Much smaller.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. I don't, people know that. So, I can take this circle and angle it, the cross-section, too, is smaller now.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Right. So, you want to get your shot should have a high arc and come straight down.

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you thinking about that physics when you were taking that shot? Because you had your physics class.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  I, 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 that figured out, you can, you become accurate. You're a marksman.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're a basketball marksman.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  You have to be. I had all the ballistics and everything worked out.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Worked it out.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Ballistics.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're talking about ballistics.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, talk about some ballistics.

• 8:42Charles Liu?

  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 gonna 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 gonna go down.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We looked up the etymology of ballistics. It's like from...

• 9:08Charles Liu?

  Ballista.

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why did you know? I wanted to tell you that I had a crack team of researchers do this, okay?

• 9:15Charles Liu?

  It's a catapult from the ancient times.

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a catapult. I wanted to tell you that, Charles.

• 9:18Charles Liu?

  Sorry, dude.

• 9:23Chuck Nice?

  Don't worry, I was very impressed. I was very impressed.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a catapult, yeah. So, yeah, it's a great word for a great idea.

• 9:29Charles Liu?

  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 skyhook, what 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.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, why are there grapes here?

• 10:01Chuck Nice?

  Because, um, so here's the great thing. So Kareem was talking about the skyhook, and I thought perhaps, uh, 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?

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cross-sectional area.

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 10:37Chuck Nice?

  So... Oh, wait. Okay, so here we go. Uh, see now, look, see, he's not all the way...

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right, right. No, no!

• 10:48Charles Liu?

  You're paying for my drag cleaning, dude.

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh!

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, it would be cool if the rim could move.

• 10:58Chuck Nice?

  Right, if the rim couldn't move, alright, you try me, come on. Because I'm gonna put my head all the way back, hold on. All the way, wait, wait, wait, here we go. Slam dog!

• 11:09Chuck Nice?

  Oh, there you go.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, to maximize that chance, I wanted to go full up, so I had the full cross action. That's what I'm saying. These are good grapes.

• 11:20Chuck Nice?

  They really are. I gotta say, these are delicious.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so, so, Charles. So, may I ask?

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's obviously, for his 38,000th point, he's not doing any calculation at all. It's not built into his sort of neurokinetics, right?

• 11:45Charles Liu?

  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.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here's what I wondered. We got this shot, which was, had deadly accuracy, and, you know, the skyhook, and we don't see it anymore. Nobody does the skyhook. We have seven footers in the NBA, they could stick their arm up, they could do the skyhook, 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.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why doesn't anyone shoot it anymore?

• 12:34Speaker 02

  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. 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.

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so presumably the three-point shot which is farther away.

• 13:00Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I think we looked it up at the perimeter, it's 23 feet 9 inches, something like that.

• 13:04Charles Liu?

  In the NBA.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the NBA, right, right, not the baby three-point shot.

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

  From college.

• 13:08Charles Liu?

  Right, that's right.

• 13:10Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So presumably you will take the shot if you think you can make it.

• 13:14Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's a lower statistically likelihood shot to take.

• 13:19Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So are they calculating whether that risk is worth it?

• 13:24Charles Liu?

  Yes, the game has changed quite a bit.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we have numbers on this, so the average in the NBA of all shots is 45%.

• 13:30Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nearly half, the all shots, but that includes three-pointers. Three-point shot average is 35%.

• 13:36Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is it worth it?

• 13:38Charles Liu?

  Here's what you do, you do that calculation breakdown. A typical three-point shot will give you on average 1.05 points. Okay, that means you miss about two-thirds of the time.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You miss two, yeah.

• 13:52Charles Liu?

  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.

• 14:13Chuck Nice?

  And this is what I love about astrophysics. Because what he just said was three beats two.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up, we'll try to calculate how Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would fare in today's NBA when StarTalk returns.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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. Professional sports has been so touched by technology, by physiology, by health, by strength, fitness.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much of that was going on in your day?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  I think it

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know that sounds like, gee grandpa, tell us what I don't mean it in that spirit, I'm just talking, we're talking about the progress of

• 15:26Speaker 02

  It's like that though, the progress of the game.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Like if you look at the game in the 1930s, they had a jump ball after every basket, um, no three-point shot.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  If you scored, if the whole team scored 30 points, that was an incredibly high-scoring game, you know. Now you have individuals scoring 30 points and the games are into the hundreds. The game, the game has just really been a barometer of human development in this sport. In 1985, uh, 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.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  And it's, it's amazing.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Joining us to help with this conversation about the evolution of the game is NBA analyst Jim Spanarkel. Jim?

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for being here.

• 16:40Speaker 04

  You're welcome.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're not just a pretty-faced analyst, you were drafted by the NBA and played for the 76ers?

• 16:47Speaker 04

  I did, yep.

• 16:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Philadelphia, his hometown?

• 16:49Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're currently an analyst for the Brooklyn Nets on the YES Network?

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've been doing the Nets for 25 years now.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, tell me about sort of the three-point shot over the years, just its trajectory.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  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 undernoticed 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, or the players, they're colliding all the time. You didn't think I'd go here with this one, but...

• 17:35Chuck Nice?

  You know what, actually, I was gonna say, you should leave these analogies to these guys.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  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, the average size of an NBA player now is give or take 6'8", 230, 235. Wow. And if you, 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

• 18:22Speaker 04

  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.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you look at all the ways one can score, there's foul shots.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that, are people taking about the same number of foul shots in the day?

• 18:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In my, in my hood, it was no blood, no foul.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you had to really get hacked before you called the game.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, if you, 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 to 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... What's the best shot on the floor from a percentage?

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The layup.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  The layup.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  And it-

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I would say dunk, but a layup.

• 19:43Speaker 04

  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-ones, to get angles on the floor, to get the basic layup. It's so congested that the game has 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.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's Steph Curry.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  Steph Curry.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Steph Curry, who will take 10 three-point shots a game.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  From the parking lot.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the parking lot.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  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.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, here's the thing. So Kareem is over seven feet tall.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got a skyhook. He took most of his shots near the basket.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  I shot 13 and I made one.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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?

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you had 13 attempts.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you made one.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  I made one.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So of your 38 billion points, 38,000 points, three of those were a three-point shot.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  One three-point shot.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what the hell were you doing? What were you thinking?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  I'm probably gonna be taken out for taking that shot.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was it, "Come on, guys, give me a chance here, please."

• 21:41Speaker 02

  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.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  So I stepped back and said, "Okay, I'll shoot this one."

• 21:52Speaker 05

  Three, and it goes! There's the first one of his life.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  I made it.

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They should have, like, bronzed that ball and gave it to you.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  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."

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe no one will notice that I took that shot.

• 22:25Chuck Nice?

  He ran away from that shot like he had committed murder.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  And it's a crazy thing to notice this is how I'm programmed in basketball. There were 22 seconds left in the shot clock. So you're supposed to be throwing it out to the guard and he takes that shot. And that's why he was doing that.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, while you were in the NBA, you overlapped with Kareem.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  I did, yes.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By how much time was that?

• 22:46Speaker 04

  Well, I played five years, so I played from 79 through 84. So I played against him for my five years.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, yeah, because he's active that whole time. Magic Johnson as well?

• 22:54Speaker 04

  Magic Johnson as well, yeah.

• 22:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So who's better?

• 22:56Speaker 04

  He was more of a contemporary.

• 22:57Chuck Nice?

  Who's better? Magic Johnson or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?

• 23:00Speaker 04

  Two different positions.

• 23:02Chuck Nice?

  Ah, man.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You knew he was gonna give that answer.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  I know. You know he was gonna do it. 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" or whatever, and you're taking your shot, 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.

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it gets blocked.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Exactly. So all the scientific gravity and everything you do doesn't come into play if I don't get the shot off and it's going behind me, 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.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Small, he's 6'6" or 6'5".

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. And if you saw one of those.

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  The little dudes. The tiny guys.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  There was one piece where Kareem was shooting his sky hook 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.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I asked Kareem, because he's the leading scorer of the NBA. I asked him, at his peak, how would he do competing today?

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a, that's a fair question, but I'll just check it out.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  I'd be able to play in today's game. I don't think somebody from the 30s could play in today's game.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're near enough in the past to sort of figure out a way to get in there.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could get in there. Because I still have skills that would translate today and be useful, scoring near the basket.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  But I'd still be competitive today because even though I didn't have that kind of muscle, my quickness and agility compensated. Speed kills.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a good way, on the court.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What? Why you wait, what, what?

• 25:14Chuck Nice?

  I don't think Kareem really understands that he's probably not like a little speedy guy.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He thought he was fast.

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but he's like seven feet, he's a giant.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can only be as fast as a seven foot person can be, is what you're saying.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so I think he has a wrong self-perception, is what I'm saying. Because when you're seven feet, you move like this.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, here's the thing. 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. 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.

• 26:10Charles Liu?

  Nerve impulses travel up to 286 miles per hour in the human body. Doesn't matter whether you're 6'3" or 7'3", those impulses are going to move fast enough to make sure you can scratch your head.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I got you!

• 26:22Charles Liu?

  That's correct.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, Charles. No, 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 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, so it has to move slower. That's my point.

• 26:59Charles Liu?

  No, that, that's, I get it.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so now with people, you're saying it moves fast enough. So seven footer, five footer shouldn't make much of a difference.

• 27:07Charles Liu?

  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.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you move fat? Don't use this man as an example of how fast you could have moved. Dude, were you as fast as the little guys?

• 27:19Speaker 04

  No.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And that, that's my whole point about Kareem.

• 27:23Charles Liu?

  But it's not, it's not because his nerves didn't have to travel faster or slower or longer.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then what's the reason?

• 27:30Speaker 04

  I was pigeon-toed, knock-kneed and slow.

• 27:37Chuck Nice?

  Basically what Jim was saying was like, look, man, I was white.

• 27:41Chuck Nice?

  Boy, did I ever set you up for that one.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, coming up, we're going to talk about the physics of snaring rebounds and sinking bank shots when StarTalk returns.

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk 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.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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, how many rebounds? Was it a billion?

• 28:40Speaker 02

  I think 17,000.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  17,000 rebounds.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  The angle in equals the angle out. So if a shot comes from this angle at the basket, the probability is it's gonna take the same angle coming off the other side.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that's a law. It's a law of optics. The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Right, and it's like a mirror.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  So you have to understand the angle that's gonna 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.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus 101-inch wingspan.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Well, it helps, but the ability to anticipate is...

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we could spend 10 minutes you telling me, I calculate the angle, but then really I just reach out and grab the ball.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  No, there's some people that just stand there. You gotta move, but...

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you are particularly potent because you basically combined your 100-inch wingspan with the knowledge of angle of incidence and angle of reflection.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Right, and what do we call hops?

• 29:58Chuck Nice?

  What we call hops.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, what are hops? That's a new word for me. In my day, I don't know that I used that word, hops.

• 30:06Chuck Nice?

  Hops is, that's your vertical.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vertical?

• 30:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, basically like...

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hang time, vertical?

• 30:11Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh!

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

  You are in a leaper.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I just, where I grew up, we didn't have that word. We didn't use that word.

• 30:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's called dis.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I could jump. Alright. I could dunk the ball in 9th grade.

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  So you had hops. That's all there is to it.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:35Chuck Nice?

  So, you know, yeah. I did not have hops.

• 30:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so do you think he got the rebounds because he's calculating angle of incidence and angle of reflection?

• 30:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or because he has 101-inch wingspan?

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  Because you know what, here's the deal. I asked, while he said that, I asked for a-

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where did you get this?

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  I always carry it.

• 31:01Chuck Nice?

  Because I am that insecure.

• 31:04Chuck Nice?

  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-

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if a ball comes anywhere-

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  Anywhere.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 31:20Chuck Nice?

  Anywhere. Well, that's arm to arm, so it would be half of that. There you go, yes, exactly.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 31:26Chuck Nice?

  Wait, sorry.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-oh.

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  I just broke your arms. I broke, oh, oh, snaps. Spitting that out.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring out the Viagra. Yeah, okay. There you go.

• 31:35Chuck Nice?

  All right, so there you go. That's 101-inch-

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the rebound comes, his arm just wherever?

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, it's not just that, it's the full, you get a, like, a circle out of that.

• 31:46Chuck Nice?

  That's right, right. And this could be a new unit of measurement, the, uh, Kareem's.

• 31:53Chuck Nice?

  Like, we are 6,000 Kareem's from midtown.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so how many Kareem's to the moon? Right, right, okay, all right.

• 32:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll work on that. Chuck, I mean, Charles, we got it like-

• 32:13Charles Liu?

  238,000 times 5,280 divided by 101 times 12.

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Chuck Nice?

  He's absolutely right!

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. 28, 238,000 is the miles to the moon. And you divide that out by the feet and inches and you do it. Yeah.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah. Well, that's what I was thinking.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  Same here. But, but, you know.

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, do you, do you, it's both, I guess, right?

• 32:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think size matters. I mean, if, you know, obviously if you're seven. Excuse me. Seven, if you're seven-two.

• 32:46Chuck Nice?

  You know, that's not what you want to say after I just put away a tape measure.

• 32:49Speaker 04

  There you go. 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 position.

• 33:10Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, that's because rebound's about position.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  And the other thing in terms of watching the basketball, where it's going to hit. If you, 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 gonna end up going? It's gonna 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.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You quickly run to the other side of the.

• 33:41Speaker 04

  Just to play the odds.

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. It's all physics. It really is. So there's not just the rebound. I, I asked Kareem about the bank shot. Because I, in 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.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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?

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Not really. Uh, making, uh, bank shots can, can be very difficult, you know? So, uh, there are certain times when it helps you, because it raises the target. When you're shooting it off the, the backboard, it raises the target, so it makes it more difficult to block that shot.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I hadn't thought about that. So, the fact that you hit the backboard first, and the backboard is higher than the rim.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meant the shot went higher to begin with.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Went higher to begin with, and it avoids the arc of the defender's reach.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, is there, can you think of an optimum angle for a bank shot? Because when I'm shooting crumble paper into the, into the office trash, if, 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?

• 35:20Speaker 04

  Some of them are, you know, some of them do shoot it. The guy with the nets, Brook Lopez, for example, a seven footer, has a great bank shot and he can shoot it from 15 feet, 18 feet, almost out to, almost to the three-point line efficiently. I think where it's been, 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, that, 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.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, because I, I keep thinking, once you're, the same point about the, the, the cross-sectional area, a bank shot, just like he said, you're coming in higher, above the, the, above the rim. And so you do these measurements.

• 36:16Chuck Nice?

  You know, the great, 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.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, did you play in Philly?

• 36:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you know, I did.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't know you did.

• 36:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, let me tell you something.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I don't know you did.

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yes, I did. So, wait a minute.

• 36:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't know if you did.

• 36:34Chuck Nice?

  This is called a hand check. 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 him. I want to hand check him right here, okay?

• 36:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, we have an actual basketball player here. Jim, come on. Come on, Jim, Jim, come on.

• 36:50Speaker 04

  I am going to watch my hamstring.

• 36:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how much were you body checked? I mean, what could you get away with?

• 36:59Speaker 04

  Well, you could get away with all of that.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 37:01Speaker 04

  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 here.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's not playing. Chuck, get him double teamed.

• 37:12Chuck Nice?

  Right, so this is a double team.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, like this, like this.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  And then, so now, no, seriously, so now...

• 37:17Speaker 04

  It's too intimate for me.

• 37:19Chuck Nice?

  This is what we call the schoolyard sexual defense. What you do is, you make the guy, you make the guy very uncomfortable. You get up with him like this, and you go, "So you like that?"

• 37:36Speaker 04

  Is he your cousin?

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, right. So what was your best shot? What was your best shot?

• 37:42Speaker 04

  I could shoot a jump shot pretty well.

• 37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, on one hand, like, what was it? The set shot they used to do?

• 37:48Speaker 04

  No, not the set shot.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, what was your best shot?

• 37:52Speaker 04

  The free throw.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up, NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reveals his true dream when StarTalk returns. And Jim, thanks for coming. All right, we'll see you in a bit.

• 38:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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! Yes!

• 38:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 38:50Speaker 02

  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.

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this on your tombstone? "I always wanted to beat Chewbacca." No. Forget the basketball, forget...

• 39:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry!

• 39:22Chuck Nice?

  You know, that may explain why every time he dunked a basketball, he went, "Oh..."

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, what is the Wookiee planet like?

• 39:35Charles Liu?

  The Wookiee home planet is a forested world.

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it have normal gravity?

• 39:39Charles Liu?

  Yes. Except it's... It's slightly stronger than that of Earth, which is why the Wookies evolved to be larger and stronger.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if basketball, if the gravity is about the same, basketball would not be much different?

• 39:51Charles Liu?

  Absolutely identical.

• 39:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Charles Liu?

  I would say probably the Wookies 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.

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Why do all the planets circle the sun on the same plane?

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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. And 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. Going to 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.

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas top and bottom, not a problem. It just collapses. But at the midplane, it tries to collapse in, and it can't, 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, good, good question.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's thinking about this. The dude is thinking about this. So, 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. Yeah, 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. And you got a flattened system. So our entire galaxy is flat. Right. So we've got a supermassive black hole in the middle, star systems in orbit around it, everybody's orbiting in the same direction,

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and our galaxy is so flat, it is flatter than a flapjack. Flatter than a flapjack. Yeah, it's more like a crepe, actually.

• 43:17Charles Liu?

  The ratio between the thickness and the width is about 100 to 1.

• 43:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  100 to 1.

• 43:21Charles Liu?

  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.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Coming up, NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar drops some wisdom about the value of sports when StarTalk returns.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my interview with one of the sports 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.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  I have a foundation that promotes STEM education.

• 44:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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.

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, did you hear what the mission statement is?

• 44:37Charles Liu?

  No.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mission statement is, "Give kids a shot that can't be blocked."

• 44:41Charles Liu?

  Oh, I love that. That's perfect.

• 44:43Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 44:52Chuck Nice?

  I can't believe I'm going to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Skyhook camp and it's just math class.

• 44:59Charles Liu?

  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.

• 45:12Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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?

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Well, I think sports teaches young people a lot of social skills that are really valuable. Leadership skills, conflict resolution, you know, the discipline. So I think there's a lot there in sports that, you know, has value, that...

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also knowing how to fail.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and dealing...

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And come back, dealing with it.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Dealing with failure and improving and coming back and doing it right the next time.

• 46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, not only how to win, but how to fail.

• 46:08Charles Liu?

  Yeah, and that happens in science, too. For every great discovery, there are hundreds of failures.

• 46:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the press never talks about those.

• 46:14Charles Liu?

  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.

• 46:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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 gotta go into a stovepipe to learn that this is biology. Oh, but it's not this, it's 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.

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 47:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 48:11Charles Liu?

  You had me at lover.

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 48:29Speaker 05

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