A Very, Very Tall Tale

Boban Marjanovic is 7-foot-3 and—no joke!—the most efficient scorer in NBA history. He’s also a career backup. Does that bother him? Less than you’d think.

- Devin Gordon

BOBAN JUST BONKED his head. It happens. Not the first time, won’t be the last. When you’re 7-foot- 3, it’s a fact of life: Your head is always a collision risk. It tends to be better outdoors, but today outside the Clippers’ training facility, the parking lot is filled with four food trucks and about a dozen picnic tables shielded from the Playa Vista sun by umbrellas that bloom almost precisely at Boban height.

It’s an early October afternoon, two weeks before the start of the regular season, and for 15 minutes now, Boban has been going table to table, shaking hands with Clippers employees. Doc Rivers is right over here by the sidewalk. Jerry West, the NBA logo himself, is over there. Marcin Gortat is hitting up the Texas barbecue truck, then the beignet truck. Tobias Harris, Boban’s best friend on the team, is getting a kale salad from the superfoods truck. Boban is hungry, his Serbia-sized stomach empty and his 290-pound body depleted—practice just ended—but he won’t eat for a while. He’ll still be out here two hours from now. He’ll be the last one to leave. He’ll help pack up the chairs.

At each table, people line up to shake Boban’s hand. “You gotta shake his hand!” one guy implores his tablemate. It’s a little discomforting to hear someone say it aloud like that—a little zoo-animal-y maybe—but on the other hand, the guy is right. You really should go shake his hand. It delivers. Boban likes to cup his left hand over his right one, the one that has swallowed yours, and his palms are surprisingly soft and cool, creating an asteroid-sized cocoon with the bouncy texture of a Casper mattress. It was so nice, I wanted to crawl inside and take a nap.