Not too long ago, there was a sense that big men were passé in basketball. It wasn’t illogical - when you have guys like Steph Curry and Damian Lillard who can shoot accurately from really far out, you can get by without a classic big man. Certainly Curry's team, the Golden State Warriors, never worried about it, and why would they? The Warriors won four titles with small ball. They had no worries about size.
But as Jay Bilas likes to point out, basketball is still a big man’s game and if you have to choose between a small guy with skills and a big guy with skills, you’re almost always going to go with the bigger guy.