With 4:25 left to play in Boston’s eventual win over the Atlanta Hawks, the TD Garden crowd rained MVP chants at the best player on the floor in Game 2, loudly and in unison, to send a message to the man who had taken over on both ends of the floor.
Usually, it’s a moment reserved for Jayson Tatum, except this time he was lined up on the right block next to De’Andre Hunter. These chants were for Derrick White.
“I was happy for him. He’s been playing his ass off these last two games,” Tatum said afterwards. “Obviously, a big, big reason why we won these two games. And we need him to continue to play at this level. And he can. So I was happy to hear that for him. We talked about it after the game. He was like, that’s what it feels like? I was like, yeah, I guess.”
The Celtics are feasting on the Hawks' defense like sharks on a whale carcass. Everyone is eating, especially White who has put up his second and third-best playoff scoring nights of his career in Games 1 and 2. White is scoring in transition, on pull ups, and in the half court as the Hawks worry about Boston’s stars.
“I mean, those guys are top, what? 15, 10 guys in the league?” White said after the game. “It just opens up the court for myself, and we're just doing a good job of having good spacing, letting them do what they do. And when my opportunity is there, I just got to attack and do what I do.”
Much has been made of White’s year-to-year growth. He came to Boston at the most hectic time of his life, months away from the birth of his first baby. White’s unconventional road to the NBA kept him humble, which is understandable when the only four-year school that showed real interest was Johnson & Wales. His work, along with a lot of encouragement, made him good, as a new Celtic, he needed prodding, and that still continues to this day.
“Sometimes we talked about him being too passive and looking for guys too much, that he’s like too good of a guy,” Tatum said. “But these last few games, being aggressive, making the right play, attacking the rim, not necessarily waiting just makes us that much better of a team. We’ve got so many guys, so many weapons offensively that everybody needs to essentially be themselves. We can play the right way and be ourselves, and at the same time be a really good team.”
White didn’t score double digits in last year’s playoffs until the second round. He didn’t score 20 until the conference Finals. He’s scored 50 points in his first two games this season, a mark he didn’t get to until his eighth game in last year’s playoffs.
If my 401k had that kind of improvement over the course of a year, I would have watched this game from my villa in Turks and Caicos.
“Whenever we were in a drought, he finds a way to get a big bucket,” Malcolm Brogdon said. “Just playing with poise, maturity, and really playing both ends of the ball as well. He’s scoring the ball so well and playing so well on offense, it’s easy to forget about his defense. But he’s still blocking shots and doing what he does on defense.”
It feels like every Celtics run is kick-started by a great defensive play from White. He’s blocked Trae Young three times already in this series, all on straight up plays. And then there's the inevitable incredible hustle play, like when he came out of nowhere to block Hunter from behind. He’s there to make the right play, on either end of the floor, making it seem like he’s everything, everywhere for the Celtics, all at once.
“Those are plays that get crowd into it. And, for us at home, that’s our advantage,” Brogdon said. “We’ve got the best crowd in the league, it’s important to get them involved and they get loud and those plays really help.”
They're plays that help now, and that will help in the long run, because White’s not just picking the Hawks apart. He’s sending a message to the league. Double Tatum or Jaylen Brown, and there will be a price to pay. White is not someone who you can leave anymore, which means eventually, the double teams on Tatum and Brown will become a little less frequent.
“That’s the beauty of being on a great team, being able to have multiple threats out there, to be able to play the game and different ways and win in different ways,” Brown said. “Tonight was an example of that. D-White just exploded. On any given night, it can be anybody. You just have to encourage that. I tell D-White all the time, be aggressive, be confident. That does open up the game, different spots during the same game or different games down the line. Teams respect other guys who are on the floor, so we need much more of that from D-White. We need him to keep that up.”