The Dutch are among the tallest people in the world. Some suggest they are the tallest, citing an average male height of 6 feet.

This is hard to be sure about. Poke around, and you can find web pages that insist Serbs and Croats are the tallest, others suggesting the Nilotic people (the Dinka, the Masai) are the tallest.

It seems safe to say the Dutch are among the tallest. It was something we noticed on our first full day in Amsterdam. Lots and lots of tall people. Men and, of course, women.

And it occurs to me that when it comes to sports opportunities … the Dutch are missing out on the game of basketball.

If you are going to have one natural gift, for playing basketball, it would be height.

It has often been remarked, among basketball coaches, that “small guys get tired, tall guys don’t get shorter.

Height means easy baskets. It means rebounds. It means blocked shots.

The Dutch, however, apparently play basketball hardly at all, and certainly not well enough to be on the radar of Europe’s top teams. For a couple of years in this decade, the Dutch didn’t have a national team. Their professional league has always been small potatoes, and their most recent appearance in the European championships was in 1989.

No one on the current national team plays in the NBA. Some play for U.S. colleges, which is a good start, but those guys are not exactly tearing it up.

Over the past couple of generations, I can think of exactly one Dutch player who had a noteworthy NBA career — Rik Smits, 7-foot-4 center for 12 seasons with the Indiana Pacers. He was taken No. 2 in the 1988 draft and then was a good player for more than a decade, the sidekick to Pacers star Reggie Miller. Smits even gad a clunky nickname — the Dunkin’ Dutchman.

But Smits seems to be the exception — a tall Dutchman who played basketball — who proves the rule.

The only other name I can find that says “NBA” is the former UCLA backup to Bill Walton — Sven Nater, who played 11 seasons in the ABA or NBA, into 1983, and was a fierce rebounder.

Nater holds a pair of distinctions: He is the only man with college basketball history to play in the NBA without starting a college game; and he is the only man to lead both the ABA and NBA in rebounding.

So, after four and a half days in Amsterdam, these are the only signs we saw of Dutch interest in a league that gives enormous amounts of money to tall guys with some basic athletic skills:

–A half-court, for basketball, in a park in the center of the city.

–A kid headed for said basketball court, carrying a basketball. He was, however, about 5-10.

–A kid, about 10, dribbling a ball as he walked down the street. Dribbling with his hands. It was a soccer ball, however, and dribbling (in the U.S. sense) is useless in soccer.

What do the Dutch play? Soccer, soccer and more soccer — usually on par with the best in the world. They are decent in sports like team handball and water polo, which tend to reward the tall, but they are not on the radar of the NBA.

It just seems odd.