Watch This Extremely Tall 12-Year-Old Canadian Basketball Player Destroy His Puny Peers
Imagine this: You’re 12 years old, and you’re all hyped up for your big basketball game. You get to the court, take a few warm up shots, and turn to look at the other team’s huddle, where, to your utter terror and devastation, you see this:
That towering figure in the middle is not the coach. It’s Olivier Rioux, a 6’9″ 12-year-old who, somehow, is allowed to play in the same basketball league with kids whose heads only come up to his bellybutton. His team, the Frenchy Phenoms, have worked out an unbeatable strategy: Give this monster of a tween the ball, and stand back and watch as he casually wrecks the shit out of anyone brave enough to come between him and the basket—which, by the way, is only eight feet high. He can dunk on the thing without even jumping.
But to keep things interesting—or maybe just because he thinks it looks cool—Rioux tends to leap into his dunks completely unnecessarily, soaring above the four- and five-foot kids hopelessly defending him. It’s like watching that Monstar game from Space Jam all over again.
And who’s having fun, here? Certainly not any of the poor, normal-sized children on the other team, who have to go out there and hustle despite knowing there’s not a chance in hell they’re going to win. Not Rioux’s teammates, who would be silly to even try shooting when they have a human skyscraper for a star player. And probably not even Rioux, for whom racking up LeBron James-level digits is about as challenging as tying a shoe.
Defense isn’t any harder for him. Who do you think is getting this rebound?
Do you think he’s going to block this shot, or…?
What’s truly incredible is that, after every basket he makes, someone out there in the crowd blows an airhorn. An airhorn. Like it’s a goddamn feat that Rioux managed to slam dunk on a kid two feet shorter than him. You’d have to imagine one of Rioux’s parents is probably tooting the thing, which brings us to the real question at hand: How did their son end up in this league? You’d think they would get him signed up for a travel team, or maybe see if he could play with kids a little older than him, a little closer to his behemoth size. Then again, if they did, this incredible image would never exist:
Honestly, giant 12-year-old Olivier Rioux, good for you. Looking forward to catching you in the NBA someday, when you’ve finally hit 19 and you’re twenty feet tall.
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This article originally appeared on VICE US.