In addition to landing a borderline All-Star in Tobias Harris, one of the NBA’s most charismatic characters is now a Sixer.

Boban Marjanovic is 30 year old center from Serbia, a 7’3″ monolith of a human being who can touch the rim and the floor at the same time. He’s on his 4th NBA team after spending the first ten years of his career in Europe, and while Boban started his American adventure in San Antonio, he didn’t join the Spurs until after Brett Brown had left to take the Sixers job.

He’s averaging 7 points and 4 rebounds in 10.7 minutes per game, but has only made 35 appearances this season. That’s what he’s been for most of his NBA career – a backup big who will come in and give you 10-12 minutes of rim protection and an offensive change of pace, but he’s not going to shoot jumpers or close out stretch bigs or do anything like you’d get from a typical starting big in the modern day association.

Boban’s game really is straightforward. The guy is a monstrous presence at the rim and he’s just incredibly hard to move. You might have seen this in person in November, because both Marcin Gortat and Montrezl Harrell found themselves in foul trouble against the Sixers, which forced Boban to come in and play a season-high 23 minutes.

The Sixers couldn’t really figure him out initially. He would just sit on the foul line then sink back to the rim and junk up anything Philly tried to do in the paint.

Eventually they were able to hit a couple of foul-line jumpers and three-pointers, and they found some ways to move Boban laterally, which is an action that gives massive dudes a lot of trouble. They like to go up and down, but when they have to shuffle and move their hips, it makes things a lot harder.

Said Embiid of his November Boban matchup:

“Boban is a big dude. I had to adjust a lot with them starting him in the third quarter. In that third quarter I missed a lot of easy shots. I was trying to figure him out, a lot of pump fakes and trying to go through him, but in the fourth quarter I changed everything. In the third quarter, I was just pump faking. He’s taller than me and he’s longer than me so you have to use your quickness and in that fourth quarter I think I used my quickness well. I have to give credit to the coaching staff and my teammates too.”

Here’s a good example of trying to move Boban off his spot to get Joel a cleaner look at the rim, after el jumpo:

It’s strange to think of 7’2″ Embiid having to rely on his quickness, but that’s what happened here, and if you can go small and spread the floor out, it puts stress on these hulking types of bigs.

That’s the main weakness, but Boban sneakily does some things better than you’d think. He’s a career 77% free throw shooter, which is higher than Ben Simmons. He’s actually a decent passer, and every once in a while he does something like this, which is crazy to me:

That’s a 7’3″ dude throwing a backdoor pass from the three-point line. And the dribble hand-off action fits into Brett Brown’s offensive system.

As far as shooting, it’s a lot of what you’d expect – short range hooks and put backs and whatnot, but he does actually move pretty well as a roll man and he can slide down the lane to get into good positions.

I pulled few attempts from the Clippers’ recent game against Toronto to show you a few examples of typical looks:

https://youtu.be/CTN1v2ZpAfQ

Some rolling, a bit of passing, offensive boards, and put backs. That’s what he does offensively, and while it lacks finesse, it can really be effective in spurts. 30 year olds who stand 7’3″ aren’t going to impress anybody in the stamina department, but he’s a very interesting second unit option.

For what it’s worth, Amir Johnson was only playing about 8-12 minutes before coming out of the rotation, so that’s all they really need from Boban in spelling Joel Embiid. You’ve got Mike Scott as another backup big coming over in the trade, plus the typical Ben Simmons staggered power forward minutes.

Beyond the on-court stuff, Boban is just a huge personality, a really funny dude who teammates seem to love.

He went dinosaur hunting with Tobias Harris in Hawai’i:

Great sense of humor.

Did you also know that Boban is the most efficient player in NBA history?

If you have some time, go dig into Boban Youtube and Twitter videos. He’s a character.