Jump & Block Height: Is It Height, Block Rating, or Power?

Dev-confirmed (Aug 10, 2026): jump height is a real, tuned mechanic. The official patch notes reduced a “block jump height boost” near the hoop (to curtail goaltending) and increased rebounder jump height. So the game applies contextual jump-height boosts by action — blocking and rebounding are tuned separately — which is exactly the kind of hidden layer this experiment exists to map. The Wemby-vs-El-Gigante featured test below still stands: does the same-crown pair meet the ball at the same height after the patch?

This is an open experiment. We can all see that bigs like El Gigante and Wembanyama swat shots that smaller players can’t reach — but the game never tells you why. Is it the listed height, the Block rating, the Power rating, or a combination?

What we think we know

• Taller characters clearly get a higher contest and finish over defenders more easily.
• Wembanyama has both elite height and a maxed, crowned Block rating, so he’s a confound — he can’t isolate the variable on his own. The cleanest test pair on the roster: Wembanyama (7’4“) vs El Gigante (7’7“) — identical crowned 5-bar Blocks, three inches of height between them. If one contests measurably higher, that’s the height variable isolated.
• The devs have tuned block reach directly: the launch notes “decreased blocking reach range for the best blockers,” and the June 25 patch “reduced near hoop radius for block” to make goaltending a skill check — so date your clips pre- or post-patch, and know that reach ≠ jump height.
• Power seems to influence how players finish through contact, which may be separate from how high they jump.
• The devs have referenced a character’s “flyer” type as a factor in how hard the advanced dunks are to execute — a categorical trait that isn’t one of the visible bars, so a non-flyer big might rise to block but still fumble the fancy dunk inputs.

How to test it

Two clean comparisons isolate the variables:

1. Same height, different Block. Find two roughly equal-height bigs with very different Block ratings, contest the identical shot from the identical spot, and compare apex height.
2. Same Block, different height. The ready-made pair: Wembanyama vs El Gigante — both carry a crowned 5 Blocks, so any contest-height gap between them is the height (or Power) variable talking.

Clip both attempts side by side and drop your evidence in the Evidence Locker below. Tag your platform — there may be frame-timing differences. Once enough corroborating findings stack up, we’ll move this from Testing to Confirmed.