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Sports Illustrated

Sport

Dan Lyons

Cavaliers Coach Says Celtics’ Derrick White Is Secret ‘Top Five’ NBA Player, Key to Franchise’s Success

Derrick White NBA Celtics Kenny Atkinson Jayson Tatum Cavaliers Joe Mazzulla Steve Kerr Jaylen Brown Shai GilgeousAlexander

Derrick White should be very accustomed to being unheralded at this point in his basketball journey.

The Celtics star—a designation he’s earned despite his relative lack of brand recognition—began his college career playing Division II ball before transferring up to Colorado, where he became an All-Pac-12 performer. After he was drafted in the late first round, he spent time in the G League as a rookie, before carving out a role in the Spurs’ rotation in his second year. And even as he’s emerged as an irreplaceable part of a Celtics team that captured the 2024 NBA title, and looks to compete for one again this year, the casual NBA fan may not realize just what a huge impact White has made on the league.

Leave that to Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson, who waxed poetic about White before and after Sunday’s game against Boston—a 109–98 win for the C’s.

“Derrick White is a top-five player in this league,” Atkinson said ahead of the matchup, per The Athletic. “I know no one says that in the standard media, but analytically, if you look at all the advanced stuff, he’s a top-five player in the league. Superstar.”

Kenny Atkinson on why he thinks Derrick White is a Top 5 player in the NBA:

"What probably people aren't measuring is his defensive impact ... analytically I think it's probably proven in various places that he is that player and that's how we treat him."

"He really disrupts… https://t.co/uKwr1QwmVt pic.twitter.com/GDXsc5dXvr
— Celtics on CLNS (@CelticsCLNS) March 8, 2026

“What probably people aren't measuring is his defensive impact, I know that’s hard to measure and hard for your average person,” Atkinson said after the Cavaliers loss. “... He’s elite on both ends. For coaches in this league, players in the league, that’s how we look at him, as a great player. ... Analytically I think it's probably proven in various places that he is that player and that's how we treat him.

“He really disrupts you defensively, he's an elite rim protector. Probably the best guard rim protector in the league. So just take all those things and put it in there and with the shooting, you got a great player.”

On a team with two bona fide superstars in Jaylen Brown and the recently returned Jayson Tatum, it is easy for White’s impact to fly under the radar. White’s coach, Joe Mazzulla, certainly concurs with Atkinson, saying that his guard’s star qualities aren’t as easy to quantify as those who fill up box scores with counting stats.

“I think at the end of the day, you guys don’t have a ton of access to the advanced analytics, so I think that’s a part in it,” Mazzulla told reporters Sunday. “I think the second piece is that type of play is just not commercialized. But at the end of the day, D-White’s a connector in the standpoint of like, I think one of the hardest things to do in the NBA is learn how to have complete confidence and also be a connector and make other people around you better, and I think he does both of that.

“We have a bunch of guys on our team like that, but he can not get the ball and then get one shot in the third quarter and it goes in. He gives the ball where it needs to get to, he has a clear understanding of situational awareness on both ends of the floor. Just highly competitive, cares about winning.”

It isn’t as if White’s impact is completely imperceptible in an average box score. After averaging a career-high 16.2 points per game a year ago, White is set to top that mark once again at age 31, and is averaging 17.4 this year, increasing his role on offense with Tatum recovering from his Achilles injury. He also has a career-high and team-high 5.7 assists per game this season. His impact is even more clear on defense; his 2.6 combined steals and blocks (commonly referred to as stocks) per game are sixth among NBA players who’ve played in at least 45 games this season, and third among guards behind Ausar Thompson and Tyrese Maxey.

However, as the two coaches said, it is the advanced numbers that really reveal White’s impact on the court.

Advanced numbers like “estimated plus-minus” help sell Atkinson’s argument for Derrick White as an elite player

Basketball analysis site Dunks & Threes’s metrics are especially bullish on White’s impact on both sides of the court. With a total estimated plus-minus of +5.4 (a stat that estimates his impact per 100 possessions), White ranks seventh in the NBA. Every player ahead of him is a veritable superstar by any definition: Nikola Jokić, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Kawhi Leonard, Luka Dončić, Victor Wembanyama, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Donovan Mitchell.

White is a perfectly balanced +2.7 points on both ends of the floor, putting him in the 94th percentile for offensive players and 99th percentile among defenders. The only other player at +2.5 or better on both ends: Wembanyama, the league’s best defender.

The Athletic cites another analytics site, the subscription-based BBall Index, which has White as the seventh-ranked player in the league and third in its wins above replacement measure—below only Cade Cunningham and Gilgeous-Alexander at 8.94.

Perhaps Atkinson’s “top five” assertion was a stretch, but the numbers seem to indicate that top 10 could be fair—and makes it easier to understand how the Celtics not only stayed afloat, but remained true title contenders with Tatum sidelined.

Mannix: Jayson Tatum’s Return Starts the Celtics’ Championship Clock

White remains an unheralded pro, but that is starting to change

In his ninth NBA season, White has not yet made an All-Star Game. His reputation remains strong on the defensive end, and he was a second-team All-Defense pick in both ‘23 and ‘24, though he went without any league-wide honors last season. Coming off of a Defensive Player of the Month selection in February, with this weekend’s comments from Atkinson and Mazzulla, it appears that the narrative may be shifting.

Boston made White’s value known in 2024, when it inked him to a four-year, fully-guaranteed $118 million extension—though at an average salary of under $30 million, with 69 NBA players making more than that per annum, he remains an incredible value for Mazzulla, Brad Stevens & Co.

Perhaps the best indication that the NBA was ahead of the public on White’s value came in the Summer of 2024, when he was considered a relatively curious selection to Team USA for the 2024 Paris Olympics, replacing Leonard.

While most of the discussion around that selection was dominated by the fact that it was White, and not his Celtics teammate Brown, who got the nod—despite Brown’s own reputation as a two-way force and the fact that he was coming off of an NBA Finals MVP win. Once the tournament started, White’s other star teammate Tatum was in and out of coach Steve Kerr’s rotation, playing in just four of the six Olympic games, setting off another wave of controversy directed at the Warriors coach from New England.

Meanwhile, White slid right into that star-studded roster, focusing on defense as the likes of Stephen Curry, LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Anthony Edwards went to work. And Kerr was thrilled with his contributions in just under 16 minutes per game.

“Derrick’s a champion,” Kerr said after Team USA’s preliminary round win over South Sudan, per Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe. “He’s a phenomenal basketball player, and he’ll continue to make a huge impact for us.”