Derrick White’s summer was already going great. It got much better.
Fresh off playing a key role in the Celtics’ run to the 2023-24 NBA championship, White has agreed to a four-year, $125.9 contract extension that will keep him in Boston, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. The extension represents a significant jump from the four-year, $70 million contract White signed as an extension of his rookie deal. back in 2020.
White signed that pact with the Spurs, who drafted the previously unknown Colorado recruit with the 29th pick in the 2017 NBA Draft. In four and a half seasons under the watchful eye of Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, White evolved from a little-used backup for stalwarts Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Danny Green and Patty Mills into a reliable starter in the backcourt, sharing ball-handling and point-of-attack defensive duties with Dejounte Murray.
These post-Duncan and Kawhi Spurs teams have had some moments — including taking the Nuggets to seven games in the opening round of the 2019 playoffs, with White exploding for 36 points in game 3 — but fell short of serious contention in a perpetually tough Western Conference, and were struggling near the bottom of the standings before the 2022 trade deadline. That’s when Brad Stevens in his first season as Celtics personnel chief took White out of San Antonio in exchange for Josh Richardson, Romeo Langford, a 2022 first-round pick and the right to exchange first-round picks with Boston in 2028.
What The 2028 pick is protected among the first. At the time of negotiation, some cautious experts (cough cough) noted the risk of such a lightly hedged trade and the possibility that if things fell apart within a few years, Boston could come to regret the trade. Even though the wheels to do falls in the near future, though, it’s hard to imagine the Celtics caring all that much, considering how vital White has been to their success over the last two seasons, and how instrumental he was on their path to the Banner 18.
Since his first appearance for the team on February 11, 2022, the Celtics have gone 175-68 with White in the lineup – a .720 winning percentage, which equates to a 59-win pace over an 82-game schedule. In every competition over the last two seasons, regular season and postseason combined, Boston has outscored opponents by a staggering 1,177 points with White on the court – the third highest mark in the championshipbehind only three-time MVP Nikola Jokić (who logged almost 400 more minutes in that span than White) and teammate Jayson Tatum (who played almost 1,000 more) – and he had the best splits on and off the court of any of the Celtics’ best players in both his complete seasons In Boston.
Encouraged to shoot 3-pointers freely and often in the five-out-and-win-the-math-battle offensive scheme favored by coach Joe Mazzulla, White became one of the NBA’s best scorers – one of only 15 players in the league to shoot at least six 3-pointers per game and making more than 39% of them this station. (He increased that production even further in the playoffs, drilling 40.4% of his 8.5 triple attempts per night.) Consider his career-highs of 5.2 assists and 4.2 rebounds per game, and the only players this season Equaling White’s contributions as a long-distance shooter, on-ball playmaker, and in-possession board-buster were Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving.
That’s some pretty heady company for a guy who started his college career at the Division II University of Colorado-Colorado Springs… and that’s before you get to the impact he makes on the other end of the court.
The 6-foot-2 combo guard has become one of the NBA’s most consistent and disruptive perimeter guards, earning second-team All-Defensive nods in each of the past two seasons for his work as the type of motor playmaker willing to sacrifice your smile to guarantee a lost ball if it brings you one step closer to victory. He’s often praised as the best shot-blocking guard the game has seen since Dwyane Wade, and for good reason: No other defensive players recorded something close to White’s 163 blocks over the past two seasons, which is more than all but 17 players in any position.
Add it all up and you have a guy who, despite relatively modest scoring-per-game numbers, has been ranked by a number of advanced analytics models as one of the top 25 players in the NBA this season. (Metrics that see White this way include, but are not limited to: estimated plus-minus, value on the substitute player, earn shares, plus-minus boxOpt DRIP and Neil Paine Estimated RAPTOR.)
High efficiency, low turnover and even less drama; comfortable playing a smaller role but able to expand its use when asked; a threat to score and facilitate on or off the ball; capable of guarding perimeter positions and providing elite-level secondary rim protection. It’s hard to overstate how perfect White proved to be in Boston – how much he helped the Celtics reach the promised land and how much that inspired other prospects to look from them white version.
It remains to be seen whether they will find out. What is clear, however, is that Boston is not interested in letting that’s it version will be released soon.
