Sport

At 7ft 9in, is Canadian teenager Olivier Rioux too tall for basketball?

In the 1980s, Roux would be highly valued as giants reigned supreme but the modern game requires different attributes to pure height

Canadian basketball player Olivier Rioux. Photograph: Casey Brooke Lawson via IMG Academy
Canadian basketball player Olivier Rioux. Photograph: Casey Brooke Lawson via IMG Academy
Andrew Lawrence
Fri Jun 28 2024 - 10:27

For those of you out there who might describe yourselves as “tall,” meet Olivier Rioux, the high schooler who just signed on to play for the University of Florida in the fall. Rioux is absurdly tall – 7ft 9in (for now) to be precise. Whether playing alongside his high school age teammates or surrounded by them in the huddle, the 300lbs beanpole looks for all the world like one of those adults who passes themselves off as a teenage player just for the thrill of beating up on kids. The only thing about Rioux that’s not tall are his tales.

Rioux has been on a rapid growth curve for some time now: 5ft 2in in kindergarten, 6ft 1in by the time he was eight. By the time he was 12, and 7ft, he would have made the 6ft 9in LeBron James look undersized. Around that time, highlights of him dominating his tragically ill-equipped competition began making the social media rounds, an optical illusion to rival the dress meme. (Are the other kids six feet or six years old?) Four years ago, Guinness World Records pronounced the then 14-year-old Rioux as the world’s tallest teen at 7ft 5in. That would have put Rioux a notch above the 7ft 4in NBA rookie of the year, Victor Wembanyama. He even looms head and shoulders above legendary NBA leviathans such as Gheorghe Mureșan (7ft 7in), Yao Ming (7ft 6in) and Sim Bhullar (7ft 5in). “People see his size,” Canada national team assistant coach Michael Meeks said of Rioux, “and their expectations are pretty high.”

Rioux isn’t the only skyscraper in his family. His father, a photographer, might have a shot at being called the standout in his profession at 6ft 8in. His mother, a former volleyball player, is 6ft 1in. His older brother, an ex-hooper, is 6ft 9in. Among other indignities, Rioux has had to suffer people pointing and yelling for his attention everywhere he goes. “Of course I’m tall and all that,” Rioux told the Naples Daily News. “But that’s no reason to yell. I mean, it is kind of funny, but it’s kind of frustrating when they do it.”

Rioux hails from the Montreal suburbs, and grew up speaking only French – which he might have gotten away with if he had taken up hockey like most kids his age. But he outgrew the sport before anyone could contemplate the damage it might do to a kid who, by age 10, was already three inches taller than the NHL’s tallest player is now.

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The language barrier only became an issue in 2021, when Rioux was sent to the famed IMG sports academy in Florida to refine his basketball skills – which, one imagines, he will need once he runs across more talented players closer to his size. But that’s not to say his savoir faire for dunking without leaving his feet won’t come in handy.

Private tutoring has done wonders for Rioux’s ability to navigate his academics and understand basketball coaching. (“It was nice,” Rioux said of his first year in Florida. “My grades improved.”) Still, you can’t help wondering if it’s the American basketball firmament that should be brushing up on its French given the recent run of Francophones at the NBA draft. “We have a lot of young kids that believe,” French giant Rudy Gobert told ESPN’s Marc Spears after seeing three of his countrymen taken in the top six slots in this year’s draft. “It started with the older generation that paved the way for us and now we are paving the way for the younger guys.”

France appears to be at much the same hoops inflection point as Canada was five years ago, when a record six Canadians came off the draft board within days of the Toronto Raptors winning the country’s first NBA championship. Steve Nash isn’t the on-court standard bearer for the Great North anymore. Nowadays, Canadian hoopers come in all flavors: the superstar (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander), the stopgap (RJ Barrett), the street tough (Dillon Brooks). But even as Rioux threatens to break the mold as Canada’s tallest player yet, one can’t help feeling that he may be coming along 20 years too late.

Basketball used to be a game where big men like Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O’Neal reigned supreme and asserted their dominance in the paint. But since the rules have been changed to allow for a more free-flowing game and statistical analytics have pigeonholed teams into prioritizing dunks and three-pointers, it’s not enough to be merely very tall anymore: seven-footers often forfeit their height advantage and play along the perimeter, as Karl-Anthony Towns does to varying levels of success with Minnesota. Another example is Wembanyama, who was taught to play all five court positions even as he quickly sprouted into a center, and typifies the approach outside the US to this positionless style of play.

We can already see how this is affecting the draft. In the 1980s, the 7ft 4in Zach Edey would have been first off the board. But on Wednesday, the Canadian fell to ninth – behind a slew of Towns-like towers – despite laying claim to one of the prettiest low-post arsenals in the college game.

It’s still a stretch to say that Rioux will get anywhere near the NBA: he will have to prove he can actually play first. The statistical information that is available on him mostly comes from his play with Canada’s Under-18 team, and the numbers (he averages fewer than 10 points and 10 rebounds per game) don’t exactly herald a colossus. And it’s incredibly hard to sustain a basic level of coordination at Rioux’s height, much less if he grows much taller. Wembanyama’s ability to play with the skill and balance of a smaller man is what makes him such a marvel on court. Rioux is five inches taller than Wemby now and, by all accounts, is still growing. And that’s with Rioux already working with a body type that is more susceptible to injury.

That’s why Rioux will start his Florida Gators career as a preferred walk-on, meaning he will have to win a rotation spot on the team in order to earn a scholarship. But at Florida, a recessed basketball power that turns out a fair number of pros nonetheless, Rioux has a chance to distinguish himself on a national stage. If gawkers are still pointing and yelling in his wake, it’s because of the heights Rioux still could reach.

- Guardian