Swingman Kyle Kuzma of the Washington Wizards—handsome fellow, frontiersman of emerging fashion trends, haver of a negative net rating despite starting for a team with a winning record—arrived for his team's Monday matchup with the visiting Charlotte Hornets wearing a warm pink sweater with some unusual dimensions. The Wizards would go on to absorb just their second home loss of the season, and Kuzma was minus-14 in 31 minutes, with four turnovers, but that is not what "the kids" are talking about today. What they are talking about is the large pink sweater. Look at it!
As you can see, the arms of the large pink sweater reach at least a foot lower than Kuzma's. The neckline appears to reach the outer edges of his collarbones. The bottom of the sweater is only an inch or two above Kuzma's knees. Here I would like to note that Kuzma stands 6-foot-10, with a seven-foot wingspan and a standing reach of nearly nine feet. He is a huge person with extremely long arms. This sweater, which fits Kuzma roughly the way one of my wife's sweaters would fit my infant daughter, cannot have been made with the dimensions of man as its target. Guinness World Records says the largest wingspan of a living human belongs to Mohamed Shehata, at a staggering 8 ft. 2.5 in., as recorded in April of this year. Each of Mr. Shehata's incredible arms reaches just over six inches longer than Kuzma's, and even he would be swimming in this gigantic garment. That is not to say that Kuzma does not look extremely cool wearing it: On the contrary, I believe Kyle Kuzma could wear an outfit made out of several different-sized garbage bags and still look extremely fuckin' cool. It's infuriating, really.
Nevertheless we are called to inquire: What would a normal person look like in the large pink sweater? More importantly, how many normal humans could fit inside the large pink sweater? The answer to the first question is simple and blessedly intuitive: A normal person inside the large pink sweater would look like a not-minor industrial accident at the Pepto-Bismol factory. As a person of roughly normal height, I hate to think of the reception I might receive if I walked into the Wizards' arena within the large pink sweater. As I would look an awful lot like the terrifying blob of The Blob, I think there's a very decent chance I would wind up full of bullet holes, and dead. Even that is assuming that I would not first become lost and disoriented inside the large pink sweater's many folds, and die of suffocation or starvation.
To answer the second question, of how many average-sized people would fit into the large pink sweater, we must once again face off against our greatest adversary, mathematics. In order to figure the size of the sweater, we must use the information we have about Kuzma to approximate the sweater's measurements. First, in order to calculate the space inside each of the sweater's enormous sleeves, we must figure the rough length of Kuzma's arms. Kuzma's wingspan measures roughly 84 inches from fingertip to fingertip; the average shoulder width of an average man is something like 16 inches, which in theory gives us a starting point for some advanced mathematics. However! Kuzma, at 6-foot-10, is more than a foot taller than the average man, which almost certainly means his shoulders are wider than average. If Kuzma's shoulders are, say, 20 inches across, that would leave 64 inches for his arms, or 32 inches per arm. As a person who prefers a nice clean number, tires of math very quickly, and would very much like to move onto the next part of this blog, that seems right.
Looking closely at the video evidence, it appears that the seam indicating the top of the sleeve is not located in the region of Kuzma's shoulder, but is in fact much closer to the elbow. Working this distance out was a huge pain in the ass, and required the compiling of some comparison measurements. My own wingspan is 70.5 inches; the distance from the tip of my right middle finger to the crease of my elbow is 18.25 inches; the distance from the crease of my elbow to something called the acromium process, which here was used as the end point of my upper arm, is 10 inches; the distance across my chest, from acromium process to acromium process, was a puny and disgraceful 14 inches. Figuring that Kuzma's proportions are relatively similar to my own—that the distance from his longest fingertip to his elbow crease accounts for approximately 25.89 percent of his total wingspan—we can guess that his lower arm to the end of his extended fingers is something like 21.75 inches. Add another few inches to account for the seam of the sleeve starting above his elbow, and then 12 inches to account for the sleeve overhanging his hand so dramatically, and then do some helpful rounding, and we've got a sleeve length of 37 inches.
The formula for calculating the volume of a cylinder is π * radius2 * height (or in this case, length). The sleeves of the shirt I am currently wearing have a diameter of roughly five inches, and thus a radius of 2.5 inches. Kuzma's arms are certainly buffer than my own sausage-like arms, and the sleeves, to me, appear to be roughly twice as big around as his arms. Therefore I am hazarding a guess that the sleeves have a diameter of 12 inches, and therefore a radius of six inches. Now simply use a pen and the back of an envelope to multiply π by six squared by 37, and you've got the volume of one sleeve, or 4,184.6 cubic inches.
My infant child—who responded to the touch of a tape measure by saying "bada-aabah qwujee qwujee" and yanking the instrument out of my hands before I could take a set of firm measurements—is approximately 28 inches tall in her little cloth shoes and has a radius at her widest point of approximately four inches, giving her a volume of something like 1,357.17 cubic inches. You could fit four of her inside the large pink sweater's two sleeves, with room leftover for a blanket and a few small toys.
What about that trunk section? Man, look at that thing. To figure how many other members of my family could fit inside it, first we must make further educated guesses about Kuzma's bodily dimensions. This website says the average waist circumference of an adult American man is 40.5 inches, but it also says the average weight for an adult American man is 196.9 pounds. Kuzma is an interesting case, in that he outweighs the average American man by more than 20 pounds, but is also both way leaner than average and way, way taller. When I was a fit and lean person, years and decades ago, before the strain and nihilism and constant lure of large burritos typical of a modern American existence caused me to swell like a water balloon, my waist was a perfectly respectable 32 inches around. Those were the days! Figure that Kuzma is leaner than I was even then, but figure too that those 221 pounds have to go somewhere, and let's say his waist is also 32 inches around. Seems fine.
We could calculate the volume of this thing—it overhangs his waist by at least a foot, and appears to be at least twice his width, with a radius approaching two feet, so figure something like 76,000 cubic inches of volume—but frankly I am not super comfortable sharing with you my own approximate volume, not before I have had a few months to hit the StairMaster! Instead we can simply look at how Kuzma fits inside the large pink sweater: Even with his very long legs, if he were to tuck his knees to his chest everything below his neck would fit very comfortably all the way inside the sweater's cavernous interior.
As my wife and I are people of roughly average height, and as the large pink sweater has a neck opening roughly the circumference of Lake Zürich, it seems reasonably certain that we could stand back to back, pull the large pink sweater down over our heads, and then tuck our arms and legs inside, away from the cold. We could then store our child and her bedding in one sleeve and enough rations for a week of wilderness survival in the other.
So you see, it is not that the large pink sweater is too large to be cool. It is rather that the large pink sweater is in fact large enough to comfortably house a family of normal people and protect them from the harsh winter elements. One does not go around wearing affordable housing on one's back as a fashion statement. Please, Kyle Kuzma, I beg you, let my poor freezing family huddle together for warmth inside your huge garment.
