LAS VEGAS — Derrick White has certainly developed a large and loyal fan base among Celtics followers, his quiet manner and bulldog approach to basketball resonating with Greenhearts.
But the Celt starter and current Team USA Olympian has an important supporter in the Pacific Northwest. Chauncey Billups, coach of the Trail Blazers, is nearly always watching. And he has been for a long time.
Seventeen years his senior, Billups has been an encouraging voice in White’s ear from their summer days around their native Denver area.
“He used to go to my camps, then he started working my camps and now it’s his camp,” said Billups in a conversation with Heavy Sports.
In fact, White recently put off joining the USA squad a bit after getting the call to replace Kawhi Leonard just so he could complete his duties with the kids at said camp.
Billups, a 17-year NBA vet who made four All-Star teams, was thrice All-NBA and was a leader on the 2004 champion Pistons, identified White’s talent early on. But there was something in the way.
“Oh, I knew he was a very good player at a young age. He just was so damn small,” the coach/friend said. “Obviously if he would have stayed that small, he wouldn’t be this Derrick White. But he always had the game, you know? Then he just started stretching out.”
Derrick White Had Not Taken a Star Path to the NBA
Physically and in a basketball sense. Perhaps White’s largest issue as an NBA player, at least for the first few years, was his seeming lack of assertion — not believing in himself as much as those around him did. Gregg Popovich, his first coach in the league, has spoken about trying to convince White of his worth after the Spurs drafted him near the end of the 2017 first round.
But White hadn’t exactly taken the star path to the NBA. With no scholarship offers from a four-year college out of high school, he spent three years at Division 2 University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. After sitting out a season due to the old transfer rule, he got in one year at the state’s big school, the University of Colorado.
He played sparingly for the Spurs as a rookie, spending the larger part of his time leading the Austin Spurs to the G-League championship. White was 27 and in his fourth season in the San Antonio rotation when he was traded to the Celtics.
“When you come from where he’s been and how he’s had to kind of elevate and climb through, you know, I’m sure there was a lot of times along the way when he questioned himself and the process,” said Billups. “And that’s always when we had our talks, man. But I’m just so proud of him. I’m just so proud. Couldn’t be more proud of him.
“I did have those talks with him, really to just let him know, like, ‘You can do this.'”
Celtics Reaping the Dividends
That pride went to greater heights this spring as White was key to the Celtics sewing the franchise’s 18th championship banner. Billups knows how special an accomplishment that is, particularly considering the club’s history. He was the third overall pick in the 1997 draft by the Celts and should have spent his career in Green, but was dealt to Toronto by Rick Pitino in February of his rookie year.
Billups and White communicated through this past postseason, but there was no technical talk involved.
“Only encouragement,” Billups told Heavy. “Only like, ‘Good job, keep going, you’re looking good, keep leading, keep being that guy, they can’t do it without you.'”
And Derrick White would have had a harder time doing it in his career without voices like that of Chauncey Billups in his ear.
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Celtics’ Derrick White Got a Big Assist From Chauncey Billups