I bet if we run down the All-NBA teams this year, half of them will range from mediocre-to-awful on defense. Giannis, Tatum, Embiid, Siakam, and Butler are the only genuinely consistently really good playoff defenders likely to make the list. The others are good-but-exploitable (CP3, etc), good-if-they-try (Durant, etc), and a bunch of bad defenders, lol.

Even some good-to-great rim protecting big men have been getting repeatedly targeted on perimeter switches in the playoffs. I honestly wonder if even someone like Embiid was on a team with better defenders if a playoff team would try to pull him away from the rim and put him on an island. It's basically the Gobert thing with added mobility: he's just so much more effective inside, and while he moves well for a big man on the perimeter (better than Gobert), he's still not going to be able to stop the best guards/wings defensively on the outside in iso consistently. Not even an Embiid diss-- especially because, as mentioned, he'd fare better than the majority of true big men in iso perimeter defender against star guards/wings-- just the nature of playoff basketball and playing against such elite iso players and generally smarter coaches.

Honestly probably good for someone like Luka to be learning this lesson at age 23 when he still may have the capacity to become a better defender. He'll almost certainly never be a *good* defender, but he can at least ramp up the effort to, say, Steph Curry defensive effort levels. Steph has been targeted on defensive switches a healthy amount in his career, and while he's still not a *good* defender, he at least gives a shit enough that he can make some sneaky plays here and there and not be a total matador.

And this is honestly why I posed the question about if people would consider Tatum a Top 5 player right today... because the more and more that fans consider being a two-way player paramount to one's Top 5 credentials, the more and more likely Tatum is on that list.