Things had not been going well for Derrick White from 3-point land. His jumper didn’t travel on the three-game road trip, and he couldn't find where he had left it when he got home.
White's shot was almost aggressively off for about seven and a half quarters of this homestand. He had missed 10 of 11 3-point attempts, but another one was coming his way.
“Obviously, it's been a little bit of a struggle,” White said after the game, stating the obvious. “Everybody was just telling me to stay confident, and so they trusted me, so why not trust myself?”
When Jaylen Brown saw White open at the top of the key, the result of a double-team by CJ McCollum, Brown made the right play, and White took the shot he’s been told to take a million times … even though in that moment he felt like he’d missed a million of them.
It fell. He threw both his arms up to the sky. Relief washed over him, as did the loudest cheers of the night as New Orleans called timeout.
“We got all the trust in the world (in him),” Brown said. “He started off a little slow and then got those same looks later in the game, got hot and it helped us win the game. You just got to keep your confidence, that’s the key.”
Confidence is a word you often hear associated with White. Gregg Popovich has talked at length about working to instill that in White during his first few seasons. Ime Udoka talked about it when White was traded to Boston. White plays with a lot of it now, but that's a fairly recent development, and that shot is evidence.
Would he have even taken that shot two or three seasons ago?
“Probably not,” he admitted. “Shout to the team, coaching staff, everybody, to give me that confidence that I always do. I try to give people that confidence when they're struggling and they were able to pick me up today.”
There's no area of basketball more affected by confidence than shooting. Anyone who has taken a lot of shots has gone through a stretch of missing a lot of them. And the process of shooting an NBA 3-pointer has to be so precise that any little variation … a slight fadeaway, the ball coming off the fingers just a touch differently, jumping with a little less power … can throw the whole thing off. Every player has gone through it. There is a commiseration among players in moments like this.
“We was walking down the tunnel at halftime and I slapped his hand and was like, ‘We got all our misses out now, we’re bound to make some,’” Jayson Tatum said. “Anybody who’s as talented as he is and can shoot the ball as well as him, you just continue to take the right shots and they’ll eventually fall.”
Once they do and the weight is lifted off a shooter’s shoulders, then a cold streak can turn hot in an instant White went from a 14% shooting night from deep to a 40% night in a matter of minutes. He hit three 3-pointers in a stretch that also included another jumper, a layup, a steal, and an assist. The guy who had four points and was -5 through three suddenly had 17 points and finished +7.
Sticking with it pays off sometimes, no matter how tough things seem.
“It shouldn't be that tough, because as I told him, we support you, we’ve got your back,” Joe Mazzulla said. “We need you. So I don't care. As long as you're taking great shots and you're playing on both ends of the floor, just be yourself. I think that’s important. I think the guys said it to him too.”
The Celtics are still winning, but they're not the type of team we’ve gotten used to over the past few months. Mazzulla is actually happy that these games aren’t going as well as people want because it hammers home the message of how hard it is to win in the NBA. He sees how hard it is, even when his team makes it look a little too easy sometimes.
Yes, the guys did say something to White, and he answered them on the court with a game-changing stretch.
“It always helps to hear some encouragement from time to time, because you know how hard guys work, how bad you want to make every single shot,” Tatum said. “Sometimes that shit just does not go your way. We’ve all been there and no matter how much time you put in the gym, sometimes they just don’t go in. And it’s frustrating. But it’s good to know that we’ve all been there. So just keep shooting, keep believing in yourself. It’s gonna work out.”