Although not being 7 feet tall doesn't preclude you from being a great basketball player, it certainly seem to help a great deal. Either that, or there is some sort of height discrimination going on where great short players aren't given a fair chance.
And, although it cannot be proven to be impossible that a quadriplegic may play great basketball, it is, for practical purposes, impossible. Maybe if you want to include telepathic abilities or helper giraffes, it may be possible, but I'm assuming there's no outside help here.
Bottom line: you absolutely need gear of a certain minimum capability to produce good/great/even acceptable work of a certain sort. Notice the word "capability" not "quality"--although quality usually does determine capability. For instance--the best quality 16mm spy camera will never be able to produce ansel adams type landscapes--however, the oldest, ricketiest, cheapest made large format camera will allow such photographs--if the photographer knows how to compensate/rig the old junk to do the job. A more skilled photographer can compensate for what is lacking in some gear/tools. But a less skilled photographer can rely on the tools to compensate for his shortcomings as well.
Therefore, barring the outliers and exceptions, we can make the general statement that the higher capability/quality of the tool will generally end up generating more higher capability/quality of work in a given time with a given photographer.