Can you really grow taller with basketball?

There are some who believe that basketball can make you taller. There are many anecdotal incidents of basketball players having late growth spurts and the basket players themselves being the tallest of their families. However, correlation does not imply causation but it does not provide evidence against them either. You can find instances of several people who didn't grow taller as a result of basketball.

There are still people who insist that you can grow taller by basketball. There are four primary height increase methods fracture(-micro), electromagnetic fields(biophotons), actin cytoskeleton stimulation, and chemical methods. Basketball can't generate electromagnetic fields(intent generated by basketball related thoughts can however) and doesn't produce chemicals.

Basketball can cause microfractures and can stimulate the actin cytoskeleton via interstitial fluid flow. Bones and chondrocytes have an actin cytoskeleton much like muscles do. If you stimulate this fluid flow you can cause stem cells to differentiate into chondrocytes(even with no existing growth plate) and chondrocytes in the hypertrophic zone to well hypertrophy. The jumping involved in basketball can generate this fluid flow resulting in possible height growth.

There are some caveats. The fluid flow generated by jumping is not that high unless you jump really hard and not everyone jumps in basketball.

Fluid flow can also be generated in basketball by passing and dribbling the ball; by getting pushed onto the ground by other players; and by running across the court. So you see your play style factors heavily in how much height or bone size you will gain.

Basketball can also cause microfractures. Microfractures on an osteon level can propagate to other osteons and over time the body will gradually become longer and taller.  Microfractures must be caused by stretching the bone(also known as tensile strain) or otherwise the microfractures won't stick.  You see bone is elastic due to the collagen component.  When bone is stretched it maintains some of that stretched state due to microcracks in the osteon.  If the bone is not stretched when the microcracks are applied to the bone then the bone will probably just heal at the same size as before.  Bone has the ability to compress as well as to stretch.  Most of the forces generated in basketball are compression but the fluid flow benefits from compression forces may outweigh the recoverable temporary loss of stature by jumping.

This is why lateral loading is so beneficial because it causes the increase in fluid flow without causing compression fractures like a sport like basketball.

So you can grow taller by basketball if you play it in such a way to generate sufficient fluid flow to induce chondrogenic and osteogenic adaptations or if you cause microfractures in a tensile strained state(which basketball does not provide many opportunities to do so).