We don't have to imagine how big cats would scale, big cats exist; cats much bigger than men. I don't think a lion or tiger could jump over a backboard.
So can some humans... If you look at the video referred to by that link it's pretty clear that it is the tigers front paw is what is 12 feet off the ground. I believe I've seen footage of someone jumping to touch the top of a basketball backboard. This is massively different than someone jumping _over_ the backboard.
Maybe I jumped the gun, and the article was right.
If a human sized cat has about 1m more reach than a cat (higher CoG, longer "arms", etc) then they should be able to get to the top of a backboard (about 3m), by raising their CoG by about 2m.
I just immediately assume that anyone who says "if X was the size of a human" is wrong, because there's so many bad examples.
