"...the OVERALL skillset required to be elite in basketball contains facets of athleticism that the sport of soccer simply does not, regardless the height of the individual or likelihood of him swimming in the talent pool." Fine, I'll concede that point, although I don't think the difference between soccer and basketball is nearly as big as you think it is. Comparing basketball with football, I think this would be true for some positions, but not others. Compared with rugby, even less so.

But so what? That is not what we are discussing here, or at least not what I am discussing or arguing. This point is basically irrelevant to the point I am arguing: that the NBA does not have the world's greatest athletes. It has the world's tallest great athletes, and the world's greatest very tall athletes, and it requires a lot of athleticism. But the world's greatest athletes are very unlikely to be drawn mainly from a tiny subset of the population that is extremely tall. I think that the vast majority of the world's greatest athletes are mostly participating in the highest levels of other professional sports, such as football, soccer, rugby, and many others, rather than the NBA. The fact that their sport of choice doesn't require all aspects of athleticism does not necessarily make them lesser athletes (talk about logical fallacies). None of your arguments has caused me to re-think or waver from that position.