Does balding help you to become better basketball player?
17/12/2025
Over 25% of men in the world show signs of balding at the age of 25. Almost 1 million people go to Istanbul for hair procedures every year. And even more men just embrace it and live with it.
The latest buzz about Jaylen Brown and his hair has been a massive talking point this NBA season… mostly about the lack of it. Already he has stained his opponent’s white shirts multiple times with his jet-black hair spray and the season has only begun. Should he make an off-season trip to Turkey for a simple all-inclusive? Or should he just embrace it and shave it off just like other greats? Because historically less hair equals more wins, more MVP’s, more championships…right?
There are more than 500 players playing in the NBA every season. Average age of all NBA players is 26 years of age, so statistically every 4th player should have already started balding or at least show some signs of it, but we really do not see that. A lot of players rocking flashy hairstyles, dreads, braids, afros, buzz cuts, whatever. Some even change hair colors almost every month just like Jimmy Butler did last season. People and media even started speculating that the colors corresponded to the teams for a potential trade. And don’t even get me started on Jeremy Sochan, quick Instagram search and you would think that human cloning has suddenly become legal. So, really, the hair game in the NBA is crazy.
Enough of talking about guys with heads full of hair, where are the ones missing theirs. Obviously, the old guys like Chris Paul or Al Horford are the ones that come to mind, but those guys are probably wiser about their looks and just shave their hair to look more manly and classier, and it doesn’t feel like they are experiencing any balding. Lebron James also should be on this list (surprise, surprise, the oldest player in the league is experiencing hair loss), but who knows how many trips to Istanbul has he booked in his lengthy career so far. The large number of media articles about hair this guy has been featured in is astounding, it feels like they prefer to talk about the comeback of Lebron’s hairline more than the 3-1 comeback in 2016 finals.
The NBA fan’s 100% will know the guy named Alex Caruso, the modern “baldy” white guy of the NBA. Before the pandemic years Caruso was just a regular, receding hairline, defending role player on a winning Lakers team that went on to win the Bubble Championship (2020 season), but that is a completely different topic for another day. After the championship he finally embraced the shaved head look and funny enough, his regular season stats improved a bit – 5.5 to 6.4 points per game, from 33% 3point shooting to 40%, and after the season he landed a 37million dollar deal with the Bulls. While playing at Chicago he earned his first All Defensive team honors two years in the row, 1st team in 2023 and 2nd in 2024. Also getting significantly more playtime than in Lakers (28.7 minutes per game) and even more points per game – 10.1PPG at the 2023/24 season which has been his best to date. Even though he got traded to OKC Thunder in 2024, he still landed a contract extension for 81million dollars for 4 years and won his second championship in 2025 being vital defensive part of the best defensive team in the league. In his 9th year in the league while now considered a veteran, which sounds completely crazy to me, but let’s be real he is 31 years of age, he still is an important role player for Thunder and does his job to the maximum even on offence (7.1PPG in regular season, 9.2PPG in playoffs) and ended the year as 8th best Sixt Man of the Year in 2024.
All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Other “Bald eagle” of the NBA is none other than Derrick White, the 3point shooting machine of the Boston Celtics. He shaved his head fairly recent in summer of 2023 by literally being bullied into it by Shaq and Charles Barkley on their TNT show, often just laughing about his hair. But can you argue with two old basketball legends who were known for being bald? Probably not. Let’s be real, Derrick White now looks so much better, and his game and stats have significantly proved. In 2024 he got his second 2nd All Defensive team award and was in contention for Defensive Player of the year. Most notably he with Boston Celtics finally won a record-setting 18th championship while being a crucial part of the team’s offence. That season he was attempting two more three pointers per game than last season while also improving on his 3point % and scoring 15.2PPG. On 18th of March 2024 against Detroit Pistons he also reached his first triple-double of his career with 22/10/10 on 40% Field goal shooting. The following 2024/25 season White improved even more on his numbers – 16.4PPG, 9.1 3PA (6.8 attempted three pointers last season) while still consistently shooting 38% from arc.
Hameltion, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
People continuously keep naming the wrong players for being bald in their prime, for example, Magic Johnson, Kareem, or even Kobe. Magic only shaved his head fully after his retirement and Kareem did it while playing his last 20th season in the NBA, so both of them were completely off their prime years of playing. Kobe on the other hand is pretty hard to tell because he never was shiny bald until at least 2013 season when he tore his achilles and never regain his prime again until his last game of the career. Kobe always had his buzz cut or a bit of a shadow, but never a full shiny bald head before that. So, does this mean that going bald in this instance made him worse?
Keith Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Sgt. Joseph A. Lee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Kobe’s “most famous” teammate Shaq also went bald early in his career. You can make an argument that it is the reason why he is a 4-time champion and 3-time Finals-MVP, but he was already a Rookie of the Year and in regular season MVP talks in his first seasons. Simply put, he was dominating from the beginning, hair or no hair.
Same story with Kevin Garnett – went bald at the start of his career because he already had a receding hairline being young and naturally would have become better at basketball with age, so there isn’t a clear answer if that helped him get better.
Charles Barkley is a conflicting one because till about 1990 he had a receding buzz cut and 4 All-NBA team awards, but when he finally decided for the shiny head, his stat line actually took a downward curvature, nothing massive only decimals, he still was an MVP caliber player, until 1993 when he finally reached finals against Bulls and landed a regular season MVP. So, did it help him?
Karl Malone is also a player which is remembered for being bald but actually was with hair pretty much for most of his career. Yes, his hair was receding for most of the time in the league, but he became shiny bald only after his two MVP awards and mostly because of his age.
We cannot forget about the most notable bald player that has played the beautiful sport of basketball - Michael Jordan. But did shaving his head make him better? No. He was already crazy good even with hair and started shaving only when you could see his receding hairline in 1988. Maybe shaving the head helped him win the 6 championships, but maybe it was Pippen, who knows…
Steve Lipofsky Basketballphoto.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
To find answer to this question is very hard because shaving off the hair unfortunately doesn't make you a living legend on the court and sometimes you just don’t know if your favorite player is bald or just have very thin buzz cut. Either way, baldness in the past happened mostly because of receding hairline not necessarily because of fashion (I am not a fashion guru, I just like ball), but there was something about the 90’s, basketball and rap culture combination. In that era, it was more about strong, big muscle, athletes, “manly strong big men” look. Now it’s more about image, money, and looks because the players are a product, they want to “sell” to people, to teams, so they need to have unique, rememberable image. Players do more of what they like and don’t care about what people will say. Also, the hair technologies have evolved and salaries these modern players are getting paid aren’t going to hurt their wallets for a quick trip to Turkey, so it’s a no-brainer to get some implants.
And no. I didn’t write this because I am balding (I am).
