Teen is long on stature
Bobroczkyi (7-7) head, shoulders above rest.
When GENEVA, OHIO — strangers approach Robert Bobroczkyi, as they often do, the first question is almost always, “How tall are you?” Lately, he has been responding with typical teenage snark.
“Five-eleven,” he might say, making up a figure nearly 2 feet off the real answer.
Forgive him. Though his voice rumbles forth like boulders down a mountain, and each of his hands is the size of an iPad, and he could gaze down upon the crown of the head of any NBA player today, Bobroczkyi, 17, still has the deprecating wit and trademark eye roll of a sophomore in high school. Because that is what he is.
He likes horror movies, science-fiction novels, “oldschool” music and “NBA 2K.” He sleeps wherever and whenever possible. He taught himself to play the piano from YouTube clips. In English class, he was asked to give a presentation about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It helped, he joked, that he had seen the “Indiana Jones” movies.
And then he steps on a basketball court, where he can reject 3-point attempts from just outside the lane. He doesn’t need to be anywhere near the ball to be an intimidating factor. All he needs is to grab the rim, with both hands, while standing flat-footed.
This is life at 7 feet 7 inches, with the world at your size 17 feet. If Bobroczkyi entered the NBA tomorrow, he would join his Romanian countryman Gheorghe Muresan and Muresan’s contemporary Manute Bol, who also played at 7-7, as the tallest men to play in the league.
But unlike the hulking Muresan and the shot-blocking Bol, Bobroczkyi is modeling his far-from-developed game off that of Knicks forward Kristaps Porzingis, who at 7-3 has redefined how a player of that length can handle the nimbleness and fluidity of the modern game.
Bobroczkyi is also learning that the one thing no coach can teach — height — will not guarantee him a future in pro basketball. He developed scoliosis at a young age, which gives him lower-back trouble, and though he has stopped growing, his hips have been left misaligned by several inches. And then there is his weight.
Eating enough to fuel his 8-foot wingspan and gain the muscle needed to sustain a career is a daily ordeal. That is one reason he left Europe to come here to the Spire Institute, a 750,000-squarefoot facility on 170 acres in the Ohio wine country. Aside from the basketball court and the health-conscious cafeteria, Spire is also close to the Cleveland Clinic, which assigned a dietitian to assist with Bobroczkyi’s nutrition.
The goal is to get his weight, 195 pounds, to rise by a pound per month. Doing so requires consuming a diet of 4,500 calories per day. Bobroczkyi eats slowly, and sometimes uncomfortably. At his school, nearby Grand River Academy, the plastic chairs in the cafeteria are of normal height, which means his legs fold underneath his seat, his ankles lying flat against the floor. Eating a bowl of miso soup means lifting the bowl to his lips; for the liquid to travel all the way up there by spoon would be a long and shaky journey.
Bobroczkyi said the day he met Porzingis, while visiting a basketball academy in Spain, was the first time in a long while that he stood eye-to-eye with somebody other than his father. Porzingis was 7-1 at the time. Bobroczkyi was 14.
Bobroczkyi was always tall, even when he was little. He passed 6 feet before his ninth birthday. He dunked at age 12. His father, Zsigmond, is 7-1, and his mother, Brunhilde, a former volleyball player, is 6-1.
Still, their boy’s size raised concerns. At the Cleveland Clinic, doctors ruled out Marfan syndrome, a genetic condition of the connective tissue that can lead to life-threatening heart trouble.
“We made all kinds of tests through the years to ensure everything was all right,” the father wrote in an email. “Everything was fine.”
In Bobroczkyi’s hometown, Arad, in western Romania, he was known mostly because of his father, who had played professionally with Romanian clubs. But he began to garner attention when, in middle school, he surpassed his father’s height.
He went to Italy to play for an amateur club, A.S. Stella Azzurra. Around that time, Bob Bossman, director of the basketball program at Spire, discovered a YouTube video of Bobroczkyi coolly knocking down 3-pointers and making passes.
“I saw he has potential,” Bossman said. “You don’t get to work with a kid like that often.”
Bossman reached out to Bobroczkyi on Facebook. The conversation began: Bossman told him about the facilities, the chance to play on a team with some of the nation’s top recruits, to attend a small boarding school down the road, to practice at an Olympic training site. When Bobroczkyi and his family visited the campus in 2016, he packed a bag and did not return to Italy.
Before Bobroczkyi can entertain the thought of becoming the next Porzingis, or even of earning a college scholarship, he needs time to adjust to the speed of the American game.
“He’s so skilled for his height,” teammate Julian Dancy said. “I’ve never seen a guy that can shoot 3’s like him, especially the college 3 already.”