[quote name='camoor']Hmm - I do know that Asian people have different facial features from Africans, whose features are different again from Europeans. We even already know that the different racial groups are more suseptable to certain diseases. Is it so radical that other differences that can't be measured by the human eye or a tape measurer would also exist between races? Again, I know it's taboo and against the American Liberal Manifesto to say such things, but I ask you as a rational human being.[/QUOTE]
They are susceptable to different diseases because of evolved biological defenses against diseases in the areas they're from (ie. sickle cell anemia being a defense against malaria, and with the lack of malaria in north america, sickle cell anemia is being bred out of the population here). But the concept of different human races is a social one, not a biological one. To suggest that one race would have an innate advantage over another (and not due to a persons physical characteristics, such as longer legs), is one that goes against current scientific evidence and one that has, as far as I know, no scientific evidence to support it. You can't simply discount all the environmental differences without providing evidence to the contrary. Also, there aren't a lot of nba players born in africa, olajuwon and mutombo being two of a few exceptions of good african born players, and I don't know of any who developed their game in africa, instead of doing it in a u.s. high school or college.
Though, to mooky, yao's mother is a professional basketball player and both his parents are very tall (not sure what his father is). According to an interview I saw, he said there are a lot of tall people in the part of china he's from (wang zhi zhi and mengke bateer are the two other tall players, though I think they're about 6-10, that formed china's "great wall" on the olympic teams. Neither has had a succesful nba career, though zhi zhi is a fan favorite).