It's getting kind of ridiculous seeing all these posts about rookies struggling on defense early and "needing a lot of work".
Guys, THEY HAVEN'T PLAYED A SINGLE NBA MINUTE YET.
Do you seriously expect them to be Kawhi Leonard right out of the gate on defense?
How's Fultz defense right now? Lonzo's?
Less ridiculous than all the posts hyping Tatum's summer league play. All players need work coming into the NBA but it is good to have a realistic view of where they currently are at. James Young, clearly a lot less talented than Tatum, got plenty of hype on here but then reality hit and he couldn't get on the court to a large degree because of his poor defense. That was when we were barely a playoff team. Now we're trying to be a contender so how much will Tatum's minutes be limited if he displays similarly poor defense?
You must have missed all the posts deriding Ball because of his poor defense in college. Same goes for Ben Simmons. Fultz of course was a special case. When we had the #1 pick and everyone thought it would be Fultz, there were a lot of posts on his size and defensive potential disregarding his actual poor defense in college. Once the trade happened, all the Tatum hyped started and Fultz's defensive deficiencies came to the forefront as well as the nonsense about him not being a winner.