Source: ESPN
Originally written by Baxter Holmes
原文标题：'The most underrated player in the league': How Celtics star Derrick White ascended to Game 6 savior
On January 26, 2006, in Parker, a small suburb of Denver, Colorado, an 11-year-old boy attending Northeast Elementary School received an essay assignment from his sixth-grade teacher. He stood no more than 5 feet tall and was emaciated. He eats baseball, tennis, and football, but his favorite sport is another. The essay title is: "What do I want to do when I grow up?" 》
The boy wrote: "When I was growing up, I wanted to do a lot of things, but if I had to choose one thing, it was to be a basketball player. ”
In the 126-word essay, he says he plays with a small basketball in his bedroom every day, and he trains with his father. He admits he's not the best one in other sports, but on the basketball court, people say he's one of the best passers, and his shots are constantly improving. He hopes to enter his favorite university, North Carolina, and play for his hometown team, the Denver Nuggets, after entering the NBA.
But less than a decade later, in his senior year of high school, his dreams looked on the verge of shattering. He was no more than 6 feet tall and weighed only 150 pounds. His parents filmed many of his games on camera, edited highlights and produced copies to send to universities, hoping to attract the interest of these schools, but they all failed.
He considered a junior college in Wyoming that was very rudimentary. He also considered a school in Denver that played in the NAIA League (note: not as good as NCAA Division II) in the past, but the school did not offer scholarships.
His hopes of continuing his basketball career became increasingly remote, and he began to accept the reality: perhaps, going to college, leaving basketball forever, and graduating with a degree is his destination.
The boy's entry into the NBA seemed impossible, but he didn't expect — and no one expected — that 17 years after he wrote that essay, he would lead to the cliff of honor with a traditional NBA giant, and he had the chance to go to the Finals against the team he dreamed of playing for years ago.
Green Army savior
In Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, in the final 3 seconds, Marcus Smart missed a 3-pointer, and White rushed to the basket to complete the whistle-blowing layup, and his goal saved the Celtics for a season and dragged the series into a tie-break.
"He was like a bolt of lightning that came out of nowhere and saved our day," Jaylen Brown lamented.
But White did more than hit the shot. His teammate scored 12 points on 6-of-8 shooting from the field of conduct, and he defended the Heat players to 1-of-12 shooting, including 0-of-4 three-pointers. When White played as the main defender against Jimmy Butler, Butler shot 0 of 6.
White joined the Celtics in a trade before the trade deadline in February, and he started 70 games this season, averaging 12.4 points, 3.6 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game, which does not reflect his strong impact.
Since White made his career debut with the Celtics on February 11, 2022, the Celtics have been on an upward trajectory, with a 102-49 regular season and playoff record and a 67.5% win rate, the best in the league in the same period. During this period, White ranked 5th in the league in plus-minus, trailing only Tatum, Brown, Jokic and Aaron Gordon. White played 150 games, the most in the same period. White was named to the All-Defensive Second Team this season, the first time he had been named to the All-Defensive Team in his career, and he made the most of the team's 76 blocks and the most guards in the league.
"White was the league's most underrated player and probably still is," said one Eastern Conference executive.
In Boston, everyone praised White and everyone loved White. Celtics president Brad Stevens said: "He plays hard, he's very smart, he's always working hard. ”
Celtics boss Grossbeck said: "He makes everyone better and we love White. ”
This season is White's first full season as a Celtics, with 57 wins, the most since 2008-09, a year in which they also boasted the Big Three of Garnett, Pierce and Ray Allen. The Big Three won the championship once during the cooperation and reached the finals twice. In 2013, the Celtics sent the aging Garnett and Pierce in exchange for multiple first-round picks from the Nets, which eventually turned into Tatum and Brown. For a decade, the Celtics have struggled to fill out their roster, bringing in Hayward, Irving, Thomas Jr., Kemba Walker, Rozier and more, but most of these Celtics' careers have ended in failure.
Over time, the Celtics realized that a player like White was what they needed.
"The best compliment you can get as a player is that you can make everyone around you better," Stevens said. I think this is also a kind of superpower. ”
Another Eastern Conference executive said: "You think there are a lot of players like this, but it's not as many as you think. ”
How did White help the Celtics unlock the current version? It's both his own story and the Celtic's search for a player like him over the years. In Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, White was key to turning the tide for the Celtics, who were just 48 minutes away from reaching the Finals for the second year in a row.
White counterattacked the road
In April 2012, Jeff Culver changed the course of White's life. Previously, Culver recruited White to go to Johnson & Wales, a NAIA institution, and when Culver became the head coach of the NCAA Division II school at the University of Colorado Springs, he invited White to join him.
But there's a problem: Culver was at the end of recruiting players at various schools when he received his coaching contract, so all he could provide to White was a partial scholarship plus a $3,000 housing subsidy, and White and his father borrowed $17,000 in student loans to cover the tuition. White chose the number 14 jersey, with "14" representing the number of schools in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Division that did not recruit White. Before every game, White reminds himself why he wears No. 14: "They say I'm not good enough. ”
In 2012–13, White was the best rookie in the division, averaging 16.9 points per game. During the tournament season, White averaged 25.8 points, 7.4 rebounds, 5.2 assists, and 2.1 blocks per game.
White transferred and finished his college career at the University of Colorado, where he averaged 18.1 points, 4.4 assists, and 1.2 steals in 2016-17 to qualify for the All-Division First Team and All-Defensive Team.
At the time, White's NBA prospects were not clear, and on the night of the 2017 draft, White's parents held a "graduation party" for him at a friend's house in case White was not selected. The Spurs selected White with the 29th pick in the first round, becoming the first former NCAA Division II player to be drafted since Ronald Murray in 2002. One Western Conference executive suggested that the Spurs could be the first team in nearly 25 years to select a player in the draft who hasn't paid off his student loans.
"White is especially interesting because in the last 10 years of modern basketball ecosystem, the web and social media have developed, and in our draft radar, fewer and fewer players have slipped through the net, but White didn't become that good until he was 21." An Eastern Conference team executive said.
At White's rookie season training camp, University of Colorado coach Boyle came to the scene to observe how White performed with Popovich.
"He needs to believe he belongs to the NBA," Popovich told Boyle.
The Spurs also had Parker, Ginobili, Leonard, Aldridge, White going back and forth between the NBA and the Development League, but even then he kept a fixed rhythm, he studied rival players, and he was crazy about sleeping, hydrating, and eating.
A year later, in Game 3 of the Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs, White exploded with a career-high 36 points. After that game, he said he finally felt like he belonged to the NBA.
In the distance, the Celts were watching.
Everyone loves White
From the beginning of White's time at the University of Colorado, White's name has been brought up within Celtic management. In 2019, White was selected to the U.S. men's basketball sparring team to train with the U.S. national team, he played with Tatum, Brown, and Smart, and all three gave positive feedback to Celtics management on whether the Celtics should bring in White. When the U.S. national team trained in Las Vegas, it was also watched by Stevens, who was still the Celtics coach at the time.
'It must be fun to play with him, he cares about the team, he is very good, he always plays at the right pace, he defends hard, he always passes the ball one more time, he boosts the energy on the field, it can be seen with the naked eye. Stevens said.
Whether he played as a substitute or a starter, whether he made 15 shots or none at all, White could accept it. An Eastern Conference executive said: "Stevens takes the culture very seriously, the professional attitude, and the kind of player who puts the team first fits his requirements. ”
"White didn't have any basketball talent growing up, he struggled personally. If you can't respect him, you can't see the big picture. It sounds corny, but White is an ordinary guy who entered the NBA and he never lost himself. A Western team executive said.
A key point is that White doesn't need to have the ball in his hand to make an impact. One Eastern Conference executive said: "When you build a strong team, you want to get multiple players who can play for each other's benefit. If you get too many players who can only be powerful with the ball in hand, then you can only play half of their abilities. ”
The Celtics have experimented with several players who need to have the ball in hand to make an impact, and it hasn't worked well. The Celtics need to try something else, and by January 2022, the situation was already looming.
The Celtics were struggling at the time, losing at home to the Trail Blazers, who had a winning percentage of less than 50 percent, dropping to 23-24. Frustrated was pervasive within the Celtics, who set their sights on White ahead of the Feb. 9 trade deadline.
"The Celtics are desperate to find a player like White," said one Western Conference executive, but insiders revealed that the Spurs were not interested in sending White away. White is well loved within the team and is a key component of the team's culture. Several Spurs executives attended Spurs at White's wedding, and White thanked the coaching staff for helping him grow.
"White is the player every team in the league wants," said one Western Conference executive, "and the Celtics are relentless in wanting him." "The Celtics brought out Ronford, Josh Richardson, a 2022 first-round pick and a 2028 first-round swap, an offer the Spurs couldn't refuse. But, insiders revealed that the Spurs want to make sure White has a good home to go to a team that is going in the right direction.
White is averaging just 14.4 points per game, so the Celtics are paying a sky-high price to get him. However, the Celtics data analytics team believes that White is worth more than the underlying data, and he is one of the best defensive guards in the league.
In addition to White, Horford, which the Celtics traded back in the summer of 2021, and Brogdon, who was brought in last summer, also played a major role, and they are all indispensable puzzle pieces for the Celtics. But one Western Conference executive decided that White was the best signing for the Celtics, the star of obscurity.
Stevens was the creator of this Celtic team, and over the years, many of the players he brought in didn't play the role he expected, but now he has finally found the player of his dreams.
White, he said, was the "perfect man."