NBA prospect Isaiah Austin can nearly grab the rim without jumping

Most people paying attention to the NBA combine taking place in Chicago on Thursday and Friday are probably rubbing their hands together waiting for the exciting measurement to come out - vertical jump.

Vertical jump can tell you a lot about a player. It's a decent proxy for athleticism or explosiveness, it's definitely a predictor of dunk ability, and it helps put a player's height and reach into functional context. That is, if you're 6-foot-5 but can jump out of the gym, you've still got a great chance to block shots despite being shorter than other wings.

However, if you can already almost grab the rim without jumping, your vertical doesn't need to be all that impressive for you to be a devastating force in the paint.

Enter Isaiah Austin, the 20-year-old center prospect out of Baylor. On Thursday, he measured with a standing reach of 9-foot-4.5, the highest of all prospects measured at the combine by three inches. That's not just an enormous standing reach for this season, it's the 34th-largest measured at the combine in recorded history and the 20th-largest for a player under 7-feet tall (despite being listed by Baylor as 7-foot-1, Austin measured 6-foot-11.5 without shoes).

Seriously, look how easy these post-scoring drills look for him:

It's little surprise that Austin ranked sixth in the country in blocked shots as a sophomore with 3.26 per game.

Oh, and he also had the combine's longest wingspan at 7-foot-4.5. Austin could be a real difference-maker on the defensive end at the next level if he can learn the intricacies of the NBA game and land in a situation that makes good use of his gifts.