It will never, ever not be incredibly funny to see an NBA player stood next to a normal person.

Either you get to realise that a famously short player like Jalen Brunson would still be the tallest person in a lot of rooms at 6'2, or you get...well, you get 7'4 alien Victor Wembanyama trying to dap up 5'8 Kimi Antonelli.

The NBA's reigning defensive player of the year and current MVP favourite at the age of just 22, Wembanyama plays his basketball in San Antonio, Texas – less than 90 minutes drive from Austin, where Antonelli is racing in the US Grand Prix this weekend.

The Mercedes driver headed out to meet his fellow young star at the San Antonio Spurs' practice facility this week before the NBA season started on Tuesday night, meeting the Frenchman and telling him that he was going to be going to his first proper NBA game that evening.

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Antonelli and Wembanyama, together at last

Unfortunately for both Antonelli and Wembanyama, the Spurs were handily beaten by their Western Conference rival Oklahoma City Thunder to start off the year, with a poor shooting performance from the league's best young player (making just one of his 13 shots) contributing to a 116-104 defeat.

That's sad. You know what a great way to cheer up might be? Look at that Instagram video from the Spurs again, and see Antonelli peering up at Wemby like he's a little sentient garden gnome looking at a real boy.

There's 52cm between them. That's 20 entire inches! Here's a fun fact: if you Google search 'things that are 50cm long', maybe to draw a comparison between two athletes' heights, one of the common things you'll be told in a number of the links is that 'a ruler can be 50cm long'. Helpful.

'themeasureofthings.com' won't tell you that a ruler can be 50cm long but, sitting as it does at the very top of the search rankings, we figured it was worth a click. Shortly after, we clicked away, because every answer on the page was an item that is not 50cm long.

'It's about one-and-three-tenths times as tall as a bowling pin', was the first comparison, before going on to talk about fractions of famously short people and then – wonderfully – going from 'It's about one-fourth as long as a full size bed' to 'It's about one-fourth as long as a twin size bed'.

The internet might be broken, guys.

Still, not deterred, we checked the search for 'things which are 20 inches', and were helpfully told that 20-inch bike wheels and 20-inch cymbals are, in fact, 20 inches.

That's why you're not getting the usual nice and pithy 'wow, Wemby is as tall as Kimi Antonelli standing on a [THING]' comparison. Because 'wow, Wemby is as tall as Kimi Antonelli standing on one and three tenths of a bowling pin' is stupid.