Can 7'3" Edy Tavares and His Size 20 'Super Yachts' Land Another NBA Gig?

CLEVELAND—The video starts with two polar opposites seated next to one another. Kay Felder, a 5'9" point guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, is perched outside of his locker next to Edy Tavares, his 7'3" teammate. In Felder's hand is one of Tavares' shoes, an all-white, low-top Nike Air Force 1. The sneaker, a size 20, extends from Felder's hand to his elbow as Channing Frye, the Cavaliers' veteran center, directs and narrates the film.

"Yacht—that's a super yacht," says Frye off camera as the two junior Cavs hold the white monstrosities up to their ears like oversized cellphones. "Those things look like [orthopedics] for Andre The Giant."

"I could live in this thing," says Felder, quickly placing it on the floor next to his own left foot, giving the appearance he could place his entire shoe inside his teammate's. Tavares smiles alongside, saying little, perching the other shoe on top of his head. As it balances, the length of the shoe reaches from the outside of his left shoulder across to his right. Frye's caption: "The biggest AF1s of all time!"

The irony of it all is shoes are the reason Tavares—now 25 years old, back on the free agent market after being waived by the Cleveland Cavaliers this week—almost didn't make the NBA draft back in 2014. While the Cavaliers have little issue finding sneakers for their reserve big man—they did, after all, have to accommodate Shaquille O'Neal's size 22 throughout the 2009-10 season—Tavares has faced footwear headwinds throughout his entire ascent to the NBA.

He didn't pick up a basketball until he was 17 years old, and when it came to basketball shoes as a teenager, Tavares had trouble finding anything that fit him outside of flip-flops, oftentimes opting to be barefoot. A now-famous story found Tavares obtaining a meeting with the Atlanta Hawks, but he was forced to scurry throughout the city to find a pair of dress shoes that would fit him, as a pair of custom-ordered shoes from Spain never arrived.

Stories of late-adolescent growth in NBA athletes are common. New Orleans' Anthony Davis grew from 6'2" at age 15 to 6'10" at age 19. Another former Cavaliers big man, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, was a point guard for much of his time in Lithuania before sprouting to a 7'3" center. Where O'Neal owned a room the second he entered, oftentimes coupling his gregarious personality with his larger-than-life, 7'1", 300-plus-pound frame, Tavares, conversely, has always been a gentle giant who, to this day, still largely keeps to himself.

"I've always been big," Tavares tells Bleacher Report, gesturing his growth with right hand. "At 15, I took off. At 15 or 16, I was about 6 [feet], but at 17 I took off to 7'3" very quick."

Tavares grew up in Maio, Cape Verde, a small island nestled just outside of Senegal. His father stands 6'6", while his mother is 6'1". A German tourist who had been associated with the director of a Spanish youth team discovered him at age 17 as Tavares was working away at his family's convenience store.

As it turned out, sticking out of the crowd at age 17 would merely be the tip of the iceberg for Tavares.

As Sports Illustrated noted in 2011, only 5 percent of American men measured 6'3" or taller. Roughly 70 stood taller than 7'0"—a height deemed to be "simply extreme." Adding to this disparity is Tavares' other measurements, which include a wingspan of eight feet and hands so large they nearly meet when gripping a regulation-size basketball.

"Every time I try to go out and have no one see me, it's tough to blend in," says Tavares. "In places with a lot of people, you can't walk like a normal person without someone stopping to ask you...I've even had people start screaming."

Atlanta selected Tavares 43rd overall in the 2014 NBA draft, and he came to the U.S. in 2015 after signing a multiyear deal, bouncing between the then-D League and the Hawks. But even at 7'3", he struggled to catch much attention.

"In Atlanta, not so many people knew who I was. Everything [in Cleveland] is close—baseball is here, football is there—so I'd guess at least 50 percent of fans know me because they follow sports so closely."

The Cavaliers added Tavares before the final game of the 2016-17 season after the big man spent the majority of his time in the G League with Raptors 905 where he recorded 10.6 points, 7.7 rebounds and a league-best 2.7 blocks in just 23.7 minutes per game.

Cleveland was aware of him during his time in Spain, having ties to CB Gran Canaria, Tavares' Spanish team. In a situation akin to his failure to blend in among a crowd due to his size, his unique talent immediately stuck out to the Cavs front office. The team scouted him more once he came over to the United States. What it would find was a 7'3" kid who was also a tremendous human being, but a loaded front court in Cleveland spelled the end for Tavares.

Throughout the offseason, Tavares has worked on conditioning and improving his body in a way that would allow him to compete at a higher level against NBA-caliber centers. While he did this, however, the Cavaliers added the guaranteed contracts of Jae Crowder and Ante Zizic in the Kyrie Irving trade with the Boston Celtics. That move limited available minutes in the team's frontcourt in the preseason.

Tavares' contract was not fully guaranteed, and he received just four minutes in Cleveland's preseason game against the Washington Wizards on Oct. 8—one that featured nary a regular starter. That put him behind Zizic and Kendrick Perkins on the depth chart and signaled an uncertain future with the team.

"Big Edy hasn't had a lot of time over the course of the preseason, but having him being around the rim, protecting the basket, the young guy has been pretty good," said Cavs head coach Tyronn Lue. "He's good, but it's just been a lack of available time."

What's next remains a mystery given only a handful of teams have the capacity to add Tavares prior to the start of the season. Currently, just eight teams have the cap space required to sign him, while a handful more have a trade exception that would be used to absorb his $1.6 million. The last option under newer league rules would be a two-way deal that allows a team to sign up to two players that split time between the NBA and G-League. Most teams that still have these available would be more apt to use them on players currently on their 20-man roster.

Raptors 905 retain Tavares' G-League rights so in the event he does not get added to an NBA roster, he would head back to the team that provided him the opportunity to be a Development League All-Star just nine short months ago.

But Tavares will likely catch on with another team because of his size and personality. His shoe size alone puts him in the "simply extreme" category.

"They're hard to find, but I keep up with the sports shoes," Tavares says. "I specially order a lot of them through Nike. I have a contract with Nike. They'll send me a couple pairs, like the size 20 Air Force 1s, but the ones that don't fit, I'll give them to the others and they're happy."

One beneficiary of these hand-me-downs is Frye, who wore a size 18 in his Phoenix days but now tips closer to a size 19, the same as teammate Kevin Love. These two big men swap rarer finds, with Love wearing a pair of Frye's Air Zoom Generations on the team's media day. 

Meanwhile Edy, wherever he plays this season, will continue to proudly wear his yachts—super yachts.