SALT LAKE CITY — While training camp is still 18 days away, the players on the Utah Jazz are already getting ready for the season. Two Jazzmen, Rudy Gobert and Tibor Pleiss, have been hard at work over the last week representing their countries in the FIBA EuroBasket tournament. Here's a recap of how they've played.

Rudy Gobert

Rudy's been playing for Team France, which has gone undefeated through the entire group stage. Gobert has looked basically familiar in his group stage play: he's making a high percentage of his shots overall, gathering some impressive blocks, and rebounding with the best of them. The dunks have been great too.

In group stage play, he's averaged 17.5 points, 12.7 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 3.1 blocks, 2.7 steals per 36 minutes of play, while shooting 65.5 percent from the field and 68.4 percent from the free throw line.

Gobert has used the relatively lesser competition of EuroBasket to try some things we haven't seen before, though. He's showed off some nice quick spin moves when he receives the ball in the post, something we didn't really see him do successfully last year. That's encouraging: Gobert's big advantage over centers on the offensive end is his length and quickness, and if he can use both in one-on-one situations, it will really help him be a complete offensive player.

He's also attempted a floater a few times, though it hasn't really gone in much yet. Jazz coach Quin Snyder has been working with Gobert on the floater for some time in Jazz practice, even though it's certainly not something you often see from a big. But the reasoning is good: if Gobert can effectively shoot while his momentum carries him toward the rim, he's more likely to rebound the shots he does miss. That's a big advantage over a traditional hook or jump shot.

In general, he's showing good court awareness as well, with good footwork in the pick and roll and the vision to work well with passing big man Boris Diaw. The Jazz hope to have more ball movement from their bigs next year, and Gobert is an important part of that.

Tibor Pleiss

Tibor Pleiss, the new 7'2'' center for the Jazz from Germany, has also been impressing, though hasn't been as impactful overall as Gobert. He's averaged 16.6 points, 11.1 rebounds, 0.4 assists, 1.4 blocks per 36 minutes during his play at EuroBasket, shooting 56.7 percent from the field and 92.3 percent from the free throw line.

Those are pretty good numbers for Pleiss. The rebounding is good to see: it's been a question mark, and for him to put up good rebounding numbers even in a small sample is important. On the other hand, you'd hope for more assists from the big man. While it's not as if Pleiss has been selfish on the floor, he's just not as quick to find teammates when he has the ball as you'd hope. That's going to be an important skill for him in the NBA: if he can't find open teammates, the big league will exploit him with double teams to create turnovers and prevent scores.

But he figures to work in the Jazz's offense due to his timing, movement and finishing as a roll man in pick-and-roll offense. He's able to keep the ball high and finish while on the move, important skills that many very tall players don't possess.

On the defensive end, he's shown an impressive activity level to stay in the play and understand good spots. Pleiss isn't an effective shot blocker, surprising given his height, but he will be a factor in the Jazz's defense-on-a-string philosophy.

Pleiss, though, hasn't really shown off his jump shot at all. Maybe it's just that he's played many minutes with Dirk Nowitzki on Germany, but he's playing largely inside and hasn't seemed like a threat to score from the outside much. That's a little bit disappointing, given what we heard from the Jazz's camp about his 3 point shooting, specifically, that he made 66 of the 90 threes that the Jazz had him shoot in workouts. I'm relatively pessimistic about that translating to NBA gameplay.

Germany was eliminated from EuroBasket after 4 consecutive close losses.

Meanwhile, in Utah

Fifteen of the 20 current Jazzmen on the roster are in Salt Lake City, according to Jazz President Randy Rigby. That's a fantastic turnout, especially given that two of the remaining five are in Europe, two (Dante Exum and Grant Jerrett) more are injured and can't physically play, and one (Derrick Favors) is on paternity leave after the birth of twin girls.

It's encouraging to see buy-in from the entire roster like that, from big name players all the way down to non-guaranteed guys. It should make a difference, too: with the lack of practice time during the NBA season, extra hours for three weeks before training camp begins is going to be critical for skill development and the team further implementing Quin Snyder's system.

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