Derrick White has become a tough subject for the Boston Celtics fanbase. He’s been mostly awesome since joining the team, but he is coming off a bad shooting season, and yet the analytics still back him up. The Celtics should expect better from White this season, and they’ve shown they still value him highly by turning down interested suitors.
A Western Conference executive told Heavy Sports’ Sean Deveney that, while teams asked about White, the Celtics made it clear he was unavailable.
“They got calls, you had to call to see if there was something there that could be done with one of their guys. You just did not know if it was going to be a whole fire sale thing, but they let it be known pretty quickly it wasn’t. The guy you’re going to go for, that everyone had their eye on was Derrick White because of the contract and the down year and maybe you can lowball a bit.
“But the Celtics were not entertaining anything like that. It’s not just hanging up the phone, everyone listens. But it is just not where they were at. He is a very popular guy on that team and in that front office, they were not going to move him.”
So it sounds like this went beyond the fact that the Celtics typically played better when he was on the floor despite his bad shooting year.
Being a good locker room guy goes a long way toward helping players not only stick with teams but also stay in the NBA, regardless of how diminished their on-court value is. Look at the Mike Conley Jr. addition. He’s understandably nowhere near the player he was, and yet Boston added him not too long after free agency started.
Maybe if White was not that great of an influence, Boston would have given it more thought, but because White creates a good culture for the Celtics, that gives fewer reasons to get rid of him.
But how long will he be in their good graces?
Brad Stevens has signaled that he will get rid of anyone if it’s for the good of the Celtics long term. No one thought Jaylen Brown was going to be traded, let alone for what they got in return, but knowing Stevens’ reasons, it shows that he always thinks forward, not backward.
Right now, there seemingly is no reason to trade White because Boston doesn’t have to. Stevens traded Brown after his best season because he ultimately believed the team was better off looking at other options instead of paying him like a superstar and hurting their flexibility in the process.
White is a little different because he won’t be paid at the same rate Brown is and was in line to be before Boston traded him. However, Stevens has shown that he knows when to pull the plug. No one’s hoping for White to be traded with the imprint he’s left on Boston, but this summer has clearly demonstrated that nothing is off the table is the better long-term option is there.
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