Old school basketball stories are the best. As Connie Hawkins suggests here, a lot of great basketball was played before people had the urge to video everything and in the 1960’s, filming - as opposed to videotaping - meant bringing in some heavy equipment.
So we never saw Earl Manigault or the Helicopter or, for that matter, Jackie Jackson.
But in this video, Hawkins says that Jackson, at 6-4, could literally touch the top of the backboard. Keep in mind that he did this without modern advances in training, nutrition and equipment.
But the story is the thing here.