How many here believe Biyombo is 23?

[Ogaju]

more like a fully mature man. Any team that pays him big bucks must be concerned about longevity.

[Celtic Fan Forever]

Facially he doesn't really look that old to me. It was much harder to believe Greg Oden was 19 coming into the NBA, looked like he could've been Bill Russell's little brother.

[PhoSita]

Who can say?

[Csfan1984]

Heard he took some kind of test/physical that proved his age. Not sure if that is true or not. Is there such a test?

[footey]

Heard he took some kind of test/physical that proved his age. Not sure if that is true or not. Is there such a test?

Cut off his leg and count the rings?

[greece66]

Who can say?

well, that's the problem. With players from sub-Saharan Africa it's literally impossible to say. There were a couple of scandals in soccer: in one case they found through MRI scans that three players of the Senegal U-17 team were overage.

In another case, a Cameroon int. selection player was foolish enough to lie multiple times about his age in official documents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_fraud_in_association_football#Africa

There are many other less known cases in Greece alone, eg Ofori-Quaye: nothing was ever officially proven but there was a very steep decline of his performance at the mature age of 23.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ofori-Quaye

So, yes, it is a bit of a pointless question as there is little way to prove anything once a person is passed 17-18 yo, but suspicion is not a bad policy because it has happened repeatedly in the past in sports.

Having said this, IMO at the worst case scenario he is a couple of years older than he says, so it does not make a big difference in terms of his value as player.   

[Csfan1984]

Heard he took some kind of test/physical that proved his age. Not sure if that is true or not. Is there such a test?

Cut off his leg and count the rings?

I googled it. Seems blood test and x-rays together can predict age within 2 years.

[LarBrd33]

Heh.  I got a lot of flack for liking biyombo this summer.  The thing is, a bunch of people here wanted us to trade up (which would have taken like 8 picks) to try to get Willie Cauley Stein.  Biyombo seemed more or less the same player, was the same age, and you could simply sign him for cheap as a free agent.  I stand by it.  Biyombo would have helped.  And at 3 mil a year, he was super cheap.  Instead we spent 12 mil on Amir which was a quality signing, but I still like biyombo.  Nice to see him making massive contributions as a starter for a Eastern Conference Finals team.

[Mattybriand]

Heard he took some kind of test/physical that proved his age. Not sure if that is true or not. Is there such a test?

Cut off his leg and count the rings?

I laughed for at least 5 minutes at this, then told my wife and she looked at me like I was retarded...  TP

[footey]

TP to you for sharing that. She sounds like my wife.

[Tr1boy]

I don't know but we should of picked him up

he has been big for the raps

classic player that was "misused"  by Charlotte. Dummies

[greece66]

Heard he took some kind of test/physical that proved his age. Not sure if that is true or not. Is there such a test?

Cut off his leg and count the rings?

I googled it. Seems blood test and x-rays together can predict age within 2 years.

This is what I found on wiki on the test that FIFA has introduced.

MRI is considered to be 99% accurate until the age of 17, after which it becomes harder for medical professionals to calculate a person's age. Professor Jiri Dvorak of FIFA said: "The efficiency stops at 17 and it's just pure coincidence that Fifa made their competition an under-17 event".Every bone in the arm and leg has an end plate from which bones grow. When the growth is completed (usually around the age of 17-18), then this end plate disappears on the MRI scans. Dvorak concedes that the scan results "will be unjust to 1% of all examined players".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_fraud_in_association_football#Introduction_of_MRI

I found online info on another method involving DNA blood test developed at the uni of Leuven. But again, it is not very accurate.

"The blood test, for example, has an accuracy of about 3.75 years over a whole age population, meaning that from newborns up to about 91 years of age our accuracy was about 3.75," said Bekaert. "The younger the individual is the higher the accuracy is because it has had less influence of the environment. So the more a person has an influence over the environment on his epigenome, as we call it, so the chemical structures on the genome the larger the error rate will become. So the error rate for younger people is about two years of age, while for 91 years of age it will be about five and a half, six, years of age."

Bekaert also conducted tests on a smaller sample of teeth, determining an individual's age with a margin of error of 4.86 years.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dna-suspects-age-idUSKCN0V31BQ

If you have another/better source, pls post.

[greece66]

Heh.  I got a lot of flack for liking biyombo this summer.  The thing is, a bunch of people here wanted us to trade up (which would have taken like 8 picks) to try to get Willie Cauley Stein.  Biyombo seemed more or less the same player, was the same age, and you could simply sign him for cheap as a free agent.  I stand by it.  Biyombo would have helped.  And at 3 mil a year, he was super cheap.  Instead we spent 12 mil on Amir which was a quality signing, but I still like biyombo.  Nice to see him making massive contributions as a starter for a Eastern Conference Finals team.

Agreed... I remember these summer threads...

[CelticSooner]

Heh.  I got a lot of flack for liking biyombo this summer.  The thing is, a bunch of people here wanted us to trade up (which would have taken like 8 picks) to try to get Willie Cauley Stein.  Biyombo seemed more or less the same player, was the same age, and you could simply sign him for cheap as a free agent.  I stand by it.  Biyombo would have helped.  And at 3 mil a year, he was super cheap.  Instead we spent 12 mil on Amir which was a quality signing, but I still like biyombo.  Nice to see him making massive contributions as a starter for a Eastern Conference Finals team.

He would have helped but the C's have bigger problems than a backup center.