Could James Comey have been a basketball superstar?

Former FBI director James Comey is among the tallest men in the United States at 6ft 8in (2m) tall.

Only one in 30,000 men in the United States can stand eye-to-eye or higher

But could Mr Comey – or any other very tall man come to that – have counted on their height alone to have a career in the US professional basketball league, the NBA?

“I’d calculate that someone who is 6’8″ has about a one-in-200 chance of reaching the NBA,” says Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a data scientist from New York.

He has compared estimates of the populations of Americans at various heights with the recorded heights of NBA basketball players.

“A man who’s under six feet tall has around a one-in-one million chance of reaching the NBA,” he adds. “A man who is over seven feet tall has about a one-in-seven chance.”

Sports writer Sam Smith, who covered Michael Jordan’s golden years at the Chicago Bulls, explains why coaches might pick someone for their height alone.

“The simplistic notion is that the taller you are, the closer you are to the basket, and the easier it is to score,” he said.

“This has led to the cliché ‘you can’t teach height’. You can get better in shooting, you can get better in dribbling, but you can’t get better in size.”

So could a young Mr Comey have been spotted for his height alone and then coached into becoming a basketball great?

Well, talent-spotting primarily based on people’s height has produced some amazing results.

Players such as Tim Duncan, Hakeem Olajuwon and Dirk Nowitzki didn’t start playing basketball until their late teens. They were talent-spotted because they were tall and then went on to become greats of the game.

The tallest players to play in the NBA were Gheorghe Mureșan and Manute Bol, who were each 7 ft 7 in tall.

But Mr Smith says team coaches can get a little too carried away with this height obsession. For every tall man who makes the breakthrough, there are probably hundreds of others brought into teams who ultimately amount to nothing.

What about the social aspect? Don’t most basketball players come from tough backgrounds, turning to basketball as a route out of poverty?