It goes deeper than that. It goes to how one evaluates a player as BPA. In my world a player who is primarily offensive and brings very little if any defense is heavily discounted, whereas the player that is a two-way player gets a premium in his evaluation.
You're also sort of defining for a player who very rarely even exists in the NBA draft. There simply are not a lot of genuine two-way talents at the top of most drafts. And when I say "genuine two-way talent", I mean a force on both ends of the court, able to bend a defense until it breaks
and able to generate more possessions for his team by inducing regular stops. Those guys are just
so hard to come by, and it's usually not obvious on draft day who they are. SGA and Kawhi are two of the league's premiere two-way talents. They went 11th and 15th, respectively. Few expected them to be powerhouses
on both ends. Then there's the obvious ones, like Wemby, who's in a galaxy of his own as a player, and rarer a talent you will never find.
Honestly,
any defensive skill is a good sign when you're looking at a potential offensive talent at the top of a given draft. Most of these guys hone those skills in the NBA anyway, and you hope they can become something more than liabilities on that end. I mean, Nikola Jokic is considered by many to be the greatest basketball player in the world today, and he's only
passable as a defender. He's certainly not a
two-way threat. Ditto Luka. Hell, Steph Curry and Steve Nash were defensive sieves for most of their careers, and even LeBron absolutely was not a two-way talent on draft day. That doesn't stop you from drafting those guys if you believe in the transformative power of their offensive ability.
Yes, if there's obvious and genuine two-way ability on display, you go with that guy. But, I mean, duh, right? Who doesn't take Wemby first overall? The point is, you're not going to see a lot of draftees with obvious and genuine two-way ability, so the rest is a bit of a crapshoot. Can you win the title with Luka? Debatable. But his offensive talent is transformative enough to keep you in the playoff conversation by virtue of his one-way ability, so in the absence of the obvious two-way threat, sometimes you draft the obvious one-way threat and hope it doesn't kill you on the defensive end.
