Former NBA player John Salley is alive and well at the age of 62, and he might consider himself a bit fortunate for that. On a recent episode of The John Salley Show, Salley claimed that most 7-footers who played in the NBA pass away by the age of 60.

“Living well is good,” Salley said. “At the age of 60, most seven-footers die; most NBA players. Like in 2016, 11 of us died. Moses Malone being one of them. Wilt Chamberlain didn’t wake up. He had the same thing that, how do you say the boy’s name in San Antonio [Victor Wembanyama]?… But he had it in his hip. And I think I have it up here, too.”

Now, Salley, listed at 6’11”, got a few things wrong here. Hall of Famer Moses Malone, listed at 6’10”, passed away at the age of 60 in September 2015. The cause of death was coronary artery disease. Now, just a few weeks before Malone’s passing, the 6’11” Darryl Dawkins had also died due to a heart attack in August 2015 at the age of 58.

In the case of the 7’1″ Wilt Chamberlain, he passed away in 1999 due to congestive heart failure at the age of 63. Chamberlain notably dealt with heart issues during his life and had an irregular heartbeat.

As for San Antonio Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama, he was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (blood clot) in his right shoulder in February 2025. Now Chamberlain wasn’t known to suffer from blood clots, so it’s unclear what connection Salley was making.

“It’s just when your vein, when you lift your arm, you’re already dumping blood,” Salley continued. “But when the vein collapses or gets crystallized, or it gets blocked at this point. In tall people…to go all the way down to my toe and then all the way back up is a lot of pressure on your heart… That’s why when you lost weight, I was like, the most important thing for you is to now push those blood, because now you don’t have any restriction making your veins thinner than they need to be.

“Now that you’re at this size, and the blood is pumping through, your veins are gonna be able to last,” Salley added. “More elasticity, better flow.”

Salley, who won four titles in 11 seasons in the league, appears to suggest that losing weight is key for NBA 7-footers to live longer. It’s an interesting theory.

Now, a fair few 7-footers who played in the NBA are alive today well past the age of 60. The most notable one is perhaps the 7’2″ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who is 79 years old. Other examples that spring to mind are the 7’1″ Robert Parish, who is 73, and the 7’4″ Ralph Sampson, who is 66. It’s not impossible, by any means, to crack that 60-year mark.