So many levels to DWhite's greatness last night.
whoops my bad that was against the Heat, Bontemps gave me that stat, but got this off an ESPN article today:
He held the Heat to 1-of-12 shooting (and 0-of-4 from 3-point range) when he contested the shot. And Heat star Butler shot 0-of-6 when White was his primary defender.
Teammates shot 6-of-8 off his passes for 12 points
Excerpts from the article:
Since White made his Boston debut on Feb. 11, 2022, the Celtics have ascended, posting a regular-season and playoff record of 102-49 (.675 win percentage), the best in the NBA during that span. During that stretch, White has the fifth-best plus-minus in the league, trailing his Celtics teammates
Jayson Tatum and
Al Horford, along with Denver's two-time NBA MVP
Nikola Jokic and
Aaron Gordon. He has played 150 games in that span, the most in the league. He received second-team All-Defense honors this season -- his first career All-Defense selection -- and led the Celtics with 76 blocks, the most of any guard in the NBA.
"Derrick was -- and maybe still is -- the most underrated player in the league," one Eastern Conference front-office executive said.
In Boston, the praise for White is effusive, overflowing, borderline obsessive. "He does whatever it takes to win a possession," Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens told ESPN. "He plays really hard, and he's really smart. And he always plays with a second effort."
Said Celtics governor Wyc Grousbeck, "He makes everybody better. We love Derrick White."
This season, their first full campaign with White, the Celtics posted 57 regular-season wins, their most since 2008-09, when Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen headlined a Big Three squad that won one title and reached two Finals. Then, in 2013, the Celtics dealt an aging Garnett and Pierce to the
Brooklyn Nets for a cache of first-round picks that they hoped would form the foundation of their next title contender. Those picks eventually yielded Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. But in the decade since that 2013 blockbuster trade, the Celtics' efforts to round out their roster -- moves that have landed
Gordon Hayward,
Kyrie Irving, Isaiah Thomas, Kemba Walker and
Terry Rozier, among others -- have largely failed.
Over time, the Celtics realized they needed, in many ways, a player just like Derrick White.
"The best compliment you can get as a player is probably that you made everyone around you better," Stevens said. "And how many guys can you get on the court that can do that for each other? I think that's a superpower."
Said another Eastern Conference executive: "You would think that there's a lot of those guys. "There's not as many as you think."
in his second season, in Game 3 of the Western Conference first-round series against Denver, White exploded for a career-high 36 points for the Spurs. After that game, he says today, he finally felt like he belonged.
From afar, the Celtics were watching.
INSIDE THE CELTICS' front office, White's name had been batted around since his time at Colorado. In 2019, White was named to the 13-man USA Basketball Select Team that trained with the USA national team. He played with Tatum, Brown and Celtics guard
Marcus Smart, who all offered a positive response to the Celtics' brass. And watching him, too, during Team USA practices in Las Vegas was Stevens, the Celtics' coach.
"It's very rare that you say, oh my gosh, he just screams, he would be so fun to play with," Stevens said. "He's very comfortable in who he is. He's about the team. And he's really good. He plays with the right pace. He guards really hard. He always makes the extra pass. He's an energy-raiser on the court. it was pretty clear in all those."
White could come off the bench, or start, shoot 15 shots or none at all and would be fine. "Brad really values culture and professionalism and guys who are team-oriented," one Eastern Conference front-office executive said, "and that's Derrick to a T."
A critical point: White didn't require the ball to make an impact. "When you're building a great team, you want to get a series of players that can each be their best self with each other," an Eastern Conference front-office executive said. "And if you get too many guys that are only good with the ball in their hands, you really only get half of what they're each capable of."
Boston had run through a number of players who needed the ball to be impactful; it hadn't worked.
The Celtics needed something else, and, by January 2022, they needed it fast.
They were floundering, with a home loss to a sub-.500
Portland Trail Blazers team dropping them to 23-24. Frustration loomed across the organization. As the Feb. 9 trade deadline approached, the Celtics zeroed in on White -- "Boston was desperate to find a guy like him," one Western Conference executive said -- but the Spurs, league sources said, had no interest in moving him. White had become beloved in the organization, a key part of its culture. When White held his wedding in Colorado, several members of the Spurs' front office attended and White thanked his coaches for helping develop him.
"Derrick was a guy that everybody in the league wanted," the Western Conference executive said. "The Celtics were just persistent." Boston came in heavy, offering
Romeo Langford and
Josh Richardson, a first-round pick in the 2022 draft and a 2028 first-round pick swap. It was the sort of offer the Spurs couldn't refuse, but, sources said, the Spurs also wanted to ensure they were sending White to a good situation, to a team that was headed in the right direction.
The Celtics had offered a princely sum for someone who averaged 14.4 points per game, but their internal analytics projected White more favorably than surface-level statistics indicated, including as one of the top defensive guards in the league. White's ability to reach top speed from a stationary position also ranked among the best on the Celtics -- and today, the staff marvels at his abilities in transition defense and how he can stop an opposing fast break even if he's outnumbered. They marvel at his anticipation.
White was just one role-player addition who has paid dividends. Before acquiring White, the Celtics had traded for veteran big man Al Horford In June 2021. After trading for White, Stevens acquired another veteran guard,
Malcolm Brogdon, in July 2022. Both Brogdon and Horford have been integral. "Derrick is by far the best acquisition of all those," the Western Conference executive said. "He is an unheralded star on the Celtics team this year."
Stevens, the architect of last year's Finals team and this year's squad that hopes to join it, and the coach who tried to make it work with so many additions that never quite added up, finally has the player the franchise has spent the better part of a decade looking for.
https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/37746432/the-most-underrated-player-league-how-celtics-star-derrick-white-ascended-game-6-savior