Utah Jazz centers Rudy Gobert and Tibor Pleiss are bigger than you thought

We're deep in the era of Small Ball. In the Eastern Conference you'll see guys like Lebron James (6'8) and DeMarre Carroll (6'8) take some reps at power forward. In the NBA Playoffs the last two seasons Paul Pierce was putting in work at the Mailman's old position. And the NBA Champions, the Golden State Warriors, got a lot of use out of the vastly undersized Draymond Green, so much so that they got rid of David Lee, for pennies on the dollar. But things are different for the Utah Jazz. The foundation of this team is defense. And defense starts with defending the paint. And defending the paint means going against the grain of small ball, and going big. With 7'2 Rudy Gobert and 7'3 Tibor Pleiss there is no other option than to be big. These towering players are actually even bigger than you thought when you look at what they really match-up against.

Really, click on that.

Of course, it's not just these two guys who give the Jazz a size advantage. This group is big. Derrick Favors and Trey Lyles (and Grant Jerrett) are all 6'10. The shortest wing player is 6'6, and everyone else is about 6'8. And Dante Exum, the starting point guard, is 6'6. This is the biggest Jazz team of all time. And perhaps, the best defensive team. Sure, there's no Mark Eaton or John Stockton on this team. But overall, this is a young, quick, long group of guys who know that if they don't play defense they won't play, period.

Other teams gonna be #ragequitting all season long.