Real Madrid is protecting its giant. The club has renewed the contract of 32-year-old center Walter Edy Tavares for five seasons and an annual salary of around five million gross per year, duration and figures that define the largest contract in the history of the basketball section of the white house. Madrid is hanging on to its tower of 2.20m and 125 kilos, the player who since his arrival in 2017 has become the cornerstone of the team due to his relevance in the game and in the style of the team first coached by Pablo Laso and now by Chus Mateo. The entity has strongly bet on the continuity of the Cape Verdean, who ended his contract this summer, in addition to the case of Hezonja, both for five years. The winning shot was for Tavares. The most decisive man in European basketball in recent years kept the door open to return to the NBA while the richest clubs in the Euroleague, Greek and Turkish at the forefront, continued to wait.
Tavares landed in Madrid seven seasons ago from the American development league, G-League, where he was enlisted in the Raptors 905 after a brief adventure in the NBA: just 13 games between Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers (2.5 points and 2.5 rebounds on average). He arrived in the mecca of basketball after training at Gran Canaria (2012-2015) and before that a strange signing when he caught the attention for his size and height while playing on the street on the island of Maio, in Cape Verde. In 2017, Madrid anticipated his signing by Barcelona, a move in which a call from Pablo Laso was key to convince him of the Madrid project.
At Madrid, he has a list of achievements that matches his build and the contract he has just signed: champion of four Leagues, two Euroleagues, two Cups and six Super Cups (14 titles), as well as being in the best quintet of the ACB three times and in the Euroleague three times, and being named best defender in Europe three times, in the Spanish League four times and MVP of the 2023 Final Four won in Kaunas. This season he has averaged 9.4 points, 6.5 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game in the European competition (runner-up to Panathinaikos) and is the tournament’s all-time leading blocker: 424 blocks.
Madrid’s game revolves around Tavares, who has become a beacon not only for production in the interior zone but also for the generation of baskets by the outside players due to the attraction he inevitably exerts on rival defenders. This season he had a hard time getting going due to pneumonia at the beginning of the season. “It took me a long time to recover. They gave me the strongest antibiotic and then, when I was clean, I would get tired very quickly. The important thing has been my mentality, to keep insisting, not giving up, not thinking that everything is against me. I have continued working and believing that with sacrifice you can come back. This season has strengthened me for the future,” he explained to EL PAÍS before the Final Four in Berlin.
At a time when the Madrid team has undergone the most in-depth renovation in recent summers, Tavares will continue to be the epicentre and the interior reference, an area in which he can be accompanied by Serge Ibaka and Usman Garuba, both in the plans of the white club, after the departure of Poirier.
Tavares even appeared in the dreams of the Spanish federation in the face of a possible naturalization that ultimately turned out to be labyrinthine. With Cape Verde he played in the last World Cup, a milestone in the history of the small African team.
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2024-07-05 16:58:39
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