The Celtics had played 45 minutes and 53 seconds of basketball and they still couldn't shake the Orlando Magic.
At 45:54, the ball was passed to Derrick White. Jayson Tatum, on his way to a 40-point night of his own, drew the amount of attention one might expect a potential MVP candidate to get on a drive, so he gave it up. White caught it and, thanks to the gravity of Tatum and the inexperience of the Magic, found an open lane to the rim. He followed the blue pinstriped road (yellow bricks will have to wait until they play the Pacers), planted with his left foot, and rose up for a two-handed dunk.
What?
“I've been telling everybody in the locker room that I was going to dunk more this year,” White said, somewhat sheepishly, after the game. “That was a good opportunity to go and do it.”
That dunk was the appropriate capper to his night; the final two of his 27 necessary points on a night where Jaylen Brown, a more regular 27-point scorer, didn’t have it. The dunk is the conversation piece, but the much bigger storyline of White’s October has been his 3-point shooting.
His 5-9 night brought him to a nicely round 7-14 through three games. So much has been made of his shot that he defiantly told NBC Sports Boston, “It's not like I had plastic surgery on it or something.”
And he’s right. He didn’t remake his shot. Here’s how it looked last season:
And here it is against Orlando:
It generally looks the same. There's less of a dip. The release is a little faster. But it mostly looks similar. The change is mostly in his mentality.
“Just having good energy, good flow, and don’t think,” he told reporters in Orlando. “Just got to shoot, let it go if it's open, and try to get good arc as well … off to a good start, but you just gotta keep putting good days together.”
One of White’s great attributes is his ability to play off others. The dunk was a good example of it.
With Tatum driving left and drawing overreactions from the Magic, White smartly turned the corner quickly, already on a north/south track while other Magic defenders still had their momentum going east/west. The gravity of Grant Williams in the corner caused a bad overreaction as well, assuring that there was no rim protection.
White’s ability to swim in Tatum and Brown’s wake is what makes him especially important. He’s a threat to exploit bad decisions.
Even though Brown was having a bad night, he’s still too big a threat to ever leave alone, especially in the corner. So when White found himself in the middle of the Orlando zone defense, which had been giving Boston problems all night (I know, shocker), he used the threat of Brown in the corner to look off a defender.
All it took was White looking at Brown in the corner and Orlando basically got out of his way to give him a layup.
Then later, the Celtics used Tatum as a screener, which kept Paolo Banchero occupied and out of White’s way.
We love to look at assists as ways stars make other players better, but these fourth-quarter plays by White show how simply existing on the floor can be enough for great players to improve their teammates’ lives.
At the same time, those teammates have to be good enough to punish defenses for their sins. This is why the Celtics acquired White in the first place, why they used a first-round pick to do it, and why they're probably not moving him even if some people feel there's some redundancy on the perimeter.
Because the more guys a team can put on the floor who exploit this kind of space created by great players, the more games they will end up winning. This was another game the Celtics probably would have lost a year ago before they moved Dennis Schröder and Josh Richardson.
Schröder was especially problematic because he wanted to create his own wake. Games like this, where White is at his best, show why a guy more willing to accept his role and thrive in it is more valuable.
White’s life was thrown into a blender when he was traded to Boston. Now, with his son Hendrix here and life just more settled in general, he can be everything he wants, and what the Celtics need, on the floor on a consistent basis.
“I'm feeling comfortable this whole training camp, and this whole preseason, the whole first couple of games,” he said. “I think a big thing this summer was just confidence for me and that's just what I was focusing on and doing a lot of different things to get back to that way. So I felt good out there and found a way to get a win.”