Razib Khan explains why star athletes' offspring sometimes surpass their parents. He uses Kobe Bryant as an example:
[H]ere’s the important point: [Kobe Bryant's] odds of being this height are much higher with the parents he has than with any random parents. Using a perfect normal distribution (this is somewhat distorted by “fat-tailing”) the odds of an individual being Kobe’s height are around 1 in 1,500. But with his parents the odds that he’d be his height are closer to 1 out of 5. In other words, Kobe’s parentage increased the odds of his being 6 feet 6 inches by a factor of 300! The odds were still against him, but the die was loaded in his direction in a relative sense. By analogy, in the near future we’ll see many more children of professional athletes become professional athletes both due to nature and nurture. But, we’ll continue to see that most of the children of professional athletes will not have the requisite talent to become professional athletes.
The Dish 