Winning the championship again after many years is both an honor and a challenge, and whether it can continue to remain competitive and continue to impact the championship has become the primary issue, so the Celtics and the championship hero Derrick White have completed a contract extension, so how important is White to the Celtics? This column will take you to understand.
White signed a 4-year, 125 million contract extension, and he was selected to the league's best defensive team last season, but in the Celtics system, White is not just the role of a defensive striker, last season he averaged 15.2 points, 5.2 assists, 1 steal and 1 block per game, from the basic data, it can be said that the offense and defense are integrated, and he himself continues to grow and evolve in the Celtics, and his average performance per game has improved.
So what kind of height has White's offensive and defensive strength reached? His 18.3 percent possession percentage ranks fourth on the team, but he ranked second in the league in offensive efficiency at 122.4 and 109.9 in defensive efficiency last season, ranking first among Celtics players who played more than 25 minutes per game in offensive efficiency, second in defensive efficiency and first in net efficiency. When White defended an opponent's three-point shot, opponents shot 3.3 percent from three-point range, and when White defended their opponents under the basket, opponents' shooting percentage dropped by 5.1 percent.
So what is White's style of play? Most people think of White as a 3-and-D player, he takes 41% of his shots from inside the three-point line and 59% from outside the three-point line, which is the highest player in the Celtics' starters, but he is not very deformed in terms of three-point proportion, and he can also explain this characteristic well in terms of scoring percentage, three-point shooting accounts for only 53.1% of his total scores, both three-point statistics are the highest players in the starter, his three-point shooting is very dependent on direct assists from teammates, and assists account for 80.1% of three-point points But he doesn't particularly rely on assists from teammates at the three-point line, scoring only 41.9 percent of his assists on two-point shots. It can be seen from this that he relies on his teammates to assist directly outside the three-point line, and has the ability to score and assist inside the three-point line, but he will not miss the scoring opportunities given to him by his teammates.
But White also has his own shortcomings, in the performance of interior scoring, he can only contribute 4.7 points per game, which is far from the performance of about 10 points per game of Double Tanhua, from which it can be understood that he is not a player who is good at breaking through to the basket, and the fast break score is only 1.9 points in the league and is not even in the top 100, and it can also be understood that although he has excellent defensive ability, he is not good at offensive and defensive transitions and defensive counterattacks.
Having said that, we can conclude that: first, White doesn't need much of the ball or that he is better suited to play without the ball; second, his offensive and defensive efficiency is one of the best among the main forces; Third, his three-point shot relied on direct assists from his teammates; Fourth, he has some ball-handling ability inside the three-point line; Fifth, his finishing ability under the basket is weak; Sixth, he is strong defensively but not good at scoring in offensive and defensive transitions.
As a result, White is positioned in the Celtics' system as a way to limit the opposition's perimeter core on the defensive end, especially when it comes to shooting and penetrating to the basket. On the offensive end, he pins down the defense outside the three-point line, once he gets the opportunity, he can directly try to shoot three-pointers, and if the opportunity is not good, he can also choose to hold the ball to break through the pull-up jump shot or assist teammates, such offensive and defensive tasks are the most special one in the main force of the Celtics, and it is also very difficult to replace, so whether the Celtics can defend the title next, his play is also very crucial.