Human Growth Hormone Anti Aging

What made these basketball players grow taller than they should have?

A male usually grows most around age 14 and reaches adult height at about age 17, however, there seems to be some disparity with this fact among basketball players. according to the wikipedia articles for Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen, they both grew a significant amount after when they should have: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Barkley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottie_Pippen Barkley grew about 6 inches after age 17 and Pippen grew 6 inches in college, astoundingly. So my question is: what caused these players to grow significantly after normal human growth is supposed to stop? I see two possibilities: 1. excessive amounts of training caused large releases of growth hormone(exercise increases the release of growth hormone). Although if their growth plates were closed then this would have no effect. 2. Basketball somehow caused their bones to stretch despite having closed growth plates. So which explanation seems more logical?

Public Comments

1. I think it goes back to survival, if the body has to adapt to compete it will, but i think also genes play a role also. Shorter people loose interest or get cut from the team sooner, i am sure if they could stick with it they would gain a couple of extra inches eventually.