Derrick White said he lost his joy for the game during his struggles in January. In Sunday’s 110-103 Celtics win against the Denver Nuggets, he certainly had it.
White had 17 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals in Boston’s win and more importantly, made clutch plays down the stretch. The Celtics ran a lot of their late game offense through White with Jayson Tatum struggling and D-White delivered.
I swear Derrick White never misses in the Clutch man, the dude isn’t human
— ¹⁰ (@HoodiGarland) March 2, 2025
All Derrick White does is make huge plays!
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) March 2, 2025
ABC’s Lisa Salters asked Jaylen Brown about White’s impact after the game. “D-White is a big time player,” Brown said. “Made some big time shots tonight. He made some good looks and helped us get over the hump.”
There were three plays that White made that played a big part in Boston pulling this one out in the end.
White has the switch on NikolaJokic and starts to get into his dribble. Luke Kornet comes up and sets a flare screen and rolls quickly to the basket and Derrick makes a perfect pass.
derrick white kornet pick and roll for the rest of the game please and thank you
— pete rogers, professional diaper changer (@petemrogers) March 2, 2025
On the very next possession, White has Jokic on him again. He pulls the ball back out to the three-point line and with a short shot clock, he knows he needs to get one up. So, he hit The Joker with a quick crossover and hesitation and lets the pull up three rip. Nothing but net.
This one was a huge dagger to Denver. Jaylen had loved the Jamal Murray matchup all afternoon and was going at him again and took a tough middy. There was good help by Jokic and Russell Westbrook to make the shot difficult. However, Kornet was able to get a hand on the ball for the rebound. As a result, the ball tipped out into no man’s land where White grabbed the ball and took a tough floater with limited time on the shot clock. He was able to get the roll to put the Celtics back up by 5.
Since the All-Star break, White has turned a corner, averaging 18.0 points, 4.8 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.5 steals while shooting 50% from the field and 51% from three-point range in 6 games. He has been a totally different player than the one from January and it has shown.
The Celtics needed everything D-White gave them. Derrick has been making these plays like this for the past few seasons now. It is what he does. This is the Derrick White we all have loved for the past three seasons now and it is the Derrick White the Celtics need if they are going to capture back-to-back banners for the first time since the late ‘60s.
