Derrick White didn’t see it coming. It was a few hours before the NBA’s change deadline, a notoriously stressful day. A friend asked White if he thought it would be changed, but White thought about it. In addition, he was beginning to find his pace, averaging career numbers as the San Antonio Spurs ’starting shooting goalie.
He was sitting in the hotel room while he and his companions began a long road trip. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich called White to meet. Something changed in white. He didn’t have the best feeling. I knew something was wrong.
“The octopus is coming to my room,” he called and told his wife, Hannah. “I don’t know what that means.”
His instincts will soon prove to be right: Popovich told the fifth-year Spur that he had been traded to the Boston Celtics. “It surprised me,” White says. Within seconds, his life suddenly seemed completely different.
Are we going to live? he thought. And there were more serious concerns. Hannah was about 30 weeks pregnant. They should find new doctors. And then a small seed of doubt arose, one he had been trying to suppress throughout his career:
Why didn’t they want me?
He had loved his time in San Antonio. He loved Pop. “It was a world of emotions,” White says. But he didn’t have time to be there. He had a job to do, and a flight to take. When he flew to Boston that night, he looked out the window of the plane and was told he had to seize the opportunity.
It’s incredibly difficult to join a new team in the middle of the season, let alone one with championship aspirations. Each exchange deadline, teams try to find a missing piece or one more rotating player, but it is often more complex than a spin on the trading machine. Predicting how someone can fit in with the chemistry of a computer that is still in development and achieve the delicate balance between adding to it without interrupting it is tricky. White had to learn a new system, adapt to new teammates and coaches, and find a way to acclimatize on the fly. He and Hannah would live without luggage in a small apartment near TD Garden for five or six weeks while waiting for their new home. White was determined to find his way to the Celtics, resorting to something a former teammate shared with him during White’s rookie season of 2017-18, when they both played for the G League affiliate. of the Spurs:
“Wherever life takes you,” said the companion, “ride the wave.”
“Some people only have limits on basketball IQ. Well, it’s off the charts.” —Gregg Popovich
White has spent his life doing this. He did not receive any scholarship offers outside of high school. Sometimes he wasn’t the best, second best, or even third best player on some of his prep teams. He was so thin, so small, so green that some classmates called him “Gerber Baby.” He played three years in Division II of the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs (UCCS), struggling to prove his worth, and accidentally emerged about four inches in the process. He transferred to the University of Colorado before his senior year, becoming a star and an unlikely NBA first-round pick. Once the Spurs drafted it, it evolved even further, transforming from a two-way player to a reliable potential starter.
He prospered with the cunning and overcoming of the players. He often defended the best player of a rival. By all accounts, White looked like another selection of the vintage Spurs. His brilliant instincts helped him anticipate well, making decisions in a split second and winning plays such as making the extra pass, catching an offensive rebound or deflecting the ball on defense. “Some people only have limits on basketball IQ,” Popovich says. “Well, it’s off the list.”
Gregg Popovich coached Derrick White for over four years in San Antonio. Photo by Ronald Cortes / Getty Images
White’s game impressed more teams than just the Spurs. Brad Stevens, who had recently moved from the Celtics bench to the main office, was intrigued. The former Boston head coach and new president of basketball operations had been watching White since his time with the U.S. team’s Select Camp in 2019, when he earned a spot on the World Cup roster. FIBA world national team. Before the 2022 trade deadline, the Celtics sat in seventh place in the East and sought to bolster their roster. Stevens was looking for players to complement Boston’s two big wings, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
“How could we surround ourselves with the best versatile advocates, the best smart passersby, and the most selfless guys we could find?” says Stevens. “Derrick, in basketball circles, is very, very, very thoughtful about all of these things. We had seen it up close.”
Stevens knew White could make winning plays with or without the ball. He could catch the ball in the alphas and set up solid screens. He could open the floor to people. “Imagine the best teammate, the guy who will do anything to win, the guy who doesn’t care if his name appears in the newspaper, the guy who doesn’t care if he ever shoots once,” Stevens says. “He’s doing the right thing.”
First-year Celtics head coach Ime Udoka and assistant Will Hardy had previously coached White in San Antonio on Popovich’s team and knew what he was capable of. The Celtics believed White could fit. His gentle demeanor, his ability to get along with anyone, his humility, made him an ideal teammate. Someone who exemplified the team culture that Udoka was trying to instill. A team that desperately needed a shake-up of energy after a disastrous start to the 16-19 season, at one point in 11th place in the East. They were still below .500 until mid-January.
“Derrick is an unapologetic guy, he goes on,” Hardy says. “This is what our team has done this year. We have not apologized. We didn’t point a finger. We have not complained and we have said that this is not fair. “
“That’s exactly what Derrick’s journey has been like,” says Hardy. “He just kept working … His personality and that of our team are very similar.”
Mid-season trades don’t always work, but this one blossomed immediately. The Celtics turned their season around to make an unexpected series of finals, and are now tied 1-1 against the Warriors. Since the Whites have joined, the Celtics have gone away with a stunning 33-13 (.717). In addition, he has sacrificed a starting role to get off the bench, wholeheartedly accepting the change.
Although she struggled with her shot at the start of the playoffs, White is starting to find her rhythm again. He was magnificent in winning the first game of the Boston Finals, scoring 21 points, hitting five 3s and playing the blocking defense. He kept Steph Curry just five points clear in the 17 possessions he defended.
White has long been an estimate of advanced metrics. For the past three seasons, his more or less tight regular defense has been ranked 12th among all NBA players during this period and fourth among the guards. Shows that the value may be unconventional. It should not be dazzling sportingly or statistically. Courage can be found elsewhere, such as in the transitional defense against the Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. During a play of game 5, the whites sprinted again to stand in front of everyone, stealing a pass under the basket. He was practically flying out of bounds, but he still had the balance and intelligence, in the air, to know that he could not throw the ball inwards under his team’s basket, so he threw it at the crowd, though that meant one would be credited with billing.
He doesn’t care about individual stats. If he scores zero points and the team wins, he is happy. He played his best scoring 22 points with five assists, one block and three steals, in a crucial sixth game loss to Miami, and couldn’t smile. “You did very well,” Hannah told him later.
“We really needed that win,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter if I start or get off the bench,” White says. “My attitude, my effort, must remain the same. From there, it’s just basketball. “
White doesn’t necessarily believe that things should be, or that there is a certain order in the universe, but it looks like he had to join the Celtics. His father, Richard, is from Boston and grew up loving the team. Richard’s father would schedule his haircuts right after the Celtics road trip in hopes of meeting his favorite players at the barber shop. “It’s been a while,” says Richard.
Part of what made the transition easier for Derrick was that he met Tatum, Brown, and Marcus Smart while playing for the U.S. team in 2019. He was welcomed by his new teammates, attending a lot. of birthday parties in March and early April. and join them away from the ground.
“Imagine the best teammate, the guy who will do anything to win, the guy who doesn’t care if his name appears in the newspaper, the guy who doesn’t care if he ever shoots. He deals with the right things. —Brad Stevens
White met his teammates on a personal level, watching them interact with friends and family. This was important to him, coming from a fantastic culture in San Antonio where he established lasting relationships with almost everyone. “It grew the relationship of all of us together,” White says. He began to see that his own work ethic fit in with that of the team, as Boston had regained the path of the ugly losses before the whites arrived.
It’s a motto for this Boston team: “We always say ‘we’ve been through a lot,'” says White. “When you spend time together, you only have that bond and that closeness that you will follow. Whether we are up or down, we always believe in each other. “
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