Body fat percentage is a measure of the total fat mass in the body and is used to show how much of total body weight is made up of body fat.
Basketball, one of the most popular sports in the world, is a sport that requires different characteristics from its players, both intellectual, technical, and physical. We are talking about a sport requiring many athletic skills (endurance, strength, sprint, power, etc.).
As in any sport, there are physical characteristics, in particular, a specific body composition for its athletes to better express the skills required by basketball.
It is certainly not an aesthetic sport but one of performance, and what interests basketball players is to be able to have that body composition that allows them to best express their skills without weighing them down.
That is to say, a body composition that is functional to sports performance without affecting negatively.
The muscle mass we see in sports such as bodybuilding or calisthenics, or even extreme draws, is not required, but for basketball players, it is essential to have a low body fat percentage.
The body fat percentage of an NBA player is often lower than the average person. Typically, NBA players will have between 6-13% body fat, and WNBA players will have 14-20% body fat.
In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about NBA players’ body fat percentages and explain why it matters.
Average NBA Body Fat Percentage
Body fat is an important component of the human body, and both men and women need a certain amount to be healthy. A professional bodybuilder and an obese individual may both be the same weight but have distinct body fat percentages.
Most NBA players have a lower body fat percentage than the average person. This statistic, however, only provides some information about overall health and fitness.
When it comes to the ideal body fat percentage, the figures differ between the sexes. It’s vital to know that men need at least 3 to 6% of their body fat to be regarded as healthy, while women need at least 10-13% of their body fat to be considered healthy.
Using body fat percentage categories as a guide, the majority of NBA players fall into the 6-17% range. As you might expect from watching the NBA, there are players with body fat percentages as low as 6%-9%.
Muscles don’t have to be the largest in the room for NBA players in this category, but they should be the most defined, with a clear separation between each muscle. Veins can be seen not only on the arms but also throughout the body.
This physical condition is extremely difficult to sustain. Most fitness models and lean weight lifters fall into this category.
Muscles are still distinct but not as well defined in bodies in this range. Veins are usually noticeable in the arms.
LeBron James, for example, has a body fat percentage of 9-13%. Because LeBron cannot be too thin and light, this is a great range for him.
He must yet be heavy and powerful enough to handle the physical nature of the game without being pushed around.
Let’s look at another great NBA player. Nikola Jokic has lost more than 40 pounds and reduced his body fat from 22 percent to roughly 15 percent since moving to Denver.
Anthony Davis was chosen first overall and immediately began working on his frame. He started the league weighing 220 pounds and worked hard to gain strength over his first few seasons. Davis now weighs 254 pounds and has a body fat percentage of 10%.
Please keep in mind that the body fat percentages of NBA players are very speculative. Except for themselves and possibly his trainers, no one knows their true body fat percentage. We only used recent photos and compared them to athletes with known body fat percentages.
NBA Lies About Players’ Body Fat Percentages
Let’s take the example of Grayson Allen. After the NBA draft combine, NBA had his body fat percentage listed as 5.55%.
That’s almost like numbers bodybuilders have during bodybuilding competitions (though they have like 3-5%).
Here are the pictures of Grayson Allen. Here’s one of him on the beach without the shirt on.
Let’s compare him with an example from soccer. Here’s Cristiano Ronaldo, who is said to have around 7% body fat percentage.
Ronaldo is realistically about 7-8%. 5.5% is an absurd amount of vascularity that would make you look like you were covered in cock skin.
There’s no way Grayson Allen has a 1.5% less body fat percentage than Ronaldo.
So, is NBA really lying about body fat percentage, and why so?
I used to follow bodybuilding quite a bit. Top-level bodybuilders cut to 3-5% body fat for contests and by no means linger around at 5% because it is indeed unhealthy and requires a good bit of undereating.
At 5% body fat, you would expect your body to look pretty much like an anatomy chart featuring muscle striations on every possible muscle and insane separation & vascularity.
A lot of methods for measuring have high standard deviation and things like calipers will dramatically under or overestimate your body fat based on certain things like genetics if your waist area just naturally doesn’t retain much fat.
Another example… Here are pictures of Tyler Herro. While it’s possible he lost some weight or something; he’s still nowhere near 5%, even if he cut 15 lbs.
Here are two examples of professional bodybuilders:
· 2018 Mr. Olympia, Shawn Rhoden
5% is not really sustainable for a healthy adult. It’s just like Tyreek Hill claiming something bogus, like 2%. The bodybuilders shown are in the 5% ballpark, and these men peak at this body fat level and quickly go back to higher levels after the show.
The NBA either lies about body fat percentage or doesn’t measure like they suppose to.
Why Is it Important to Have a Low % Bodyfat (BF) in the NBA?
Body fat must be monitored and kept within optimal ranges because it does not give any advantage and negatively affects sports performance.
Fat never expresses work and will work as ballast which will reduce some skills such as sprinting, endurance, agility, and running speed; the NBA player will get tired more easily, etc.
Simply put, excess pounds of fat will negatively affect skills such as quickness, speed, agility, jumping, stamina and power. Anyone who knows this sport knows how important it is to work and improve these parameters for lending purposes.
In addition to decreasing aerobic and anaerobic capacity, excess fat negatively affects thermoregulation capacity, increases the risk of injury and the difficulty in expressing or highlighting one’s talent.
What Affects NBA Player’s Bodyfat?
A Player’s body fat percentage is determined by his genetic characteristics, the training sessions carried out, the role played (think of a center who certainly will not run as fast as a point guard or shooting guard), and obviously his diet.
The latter therefore becomes important both for maintaining a suitable body composition but also for basketball performance obviously.
The timing of the basketball season also affects the fluctuations in an NBA player’s body fat. In fact, the risk of gaining fat mass is greater in the off-seasons or during a period of injury, where caloric expenditure drops sharply.
Therefore, it is important for an NBA player always to keep his fat mass under constant control, trying to stay around 8-11% of body fat.
Monitoring the trend throughout the competitive period for the basketball player is a very important job for the purpose of the best sporting performance.
How Do You Determine Body Fat Percentage?
As previously said, measuring our body fat percentage necessitates determining how much of our body weight is made up of fat.
This can be accomplished using various methods, ranging from a tape measure to hydrodensitometry, in which you are weighed while submerged in water.
Men who want to calculate their body fat percentage with a tape measure should first measure the circumference of their neck and abdomen at their widest point, then subtract the neck number from the abdomen value to get a circumference figure.
To calculate the circumference, a woman should measure her neck, natural waist, and hips, then add the waist and hip measurements prior to subtracting the neck measurement.
These measurements can then be used to estimate your body fat percentage.
Calipers are also commonly used to calculate body fat % by pinching different parts of the skin and recording and converting the measurements.
Men should measure fat in their chest, abdominals, and thighs, while women should measure fat in their triceps, suprailiac (an inch above the hip bone), and thighs.
However, when it comes to calculating body fat percentages, these methods could be more accurate, and there are more accurate methods available.
Some examples are underwater weighing, DEXA scans using x-ray technology, air displacement measurements, and bioelectrical impedance scales, which measure the speed of electrical impulses through the body and estimate the amount of water vs. fat in your body.
We just hope that the NBA uses the most current methods!