What the Boston Celtics can expect from Derrick White

This is the next installment in a series of pieces examining what the Boston Celtics can expect from each of their players this season. Today, it’s Derrick White. Tomorrow: Jayson Tatum.

Others in the series: The Rookies, Mike Conley, Paul George, Jordan Walsh, Baylor Scheierman, Hugo Gonzalez, Ron Harper Jr., Payton Pritchard, and The Centers, and Sam Hauser.

This is a pretty important season for Derrick White.

He just turned 32 years old, which is the age that makes people start to squint at his game and pull out a magnifying glass to see if there are any signs of deterioration. In White’s case, he’s coming off his worst shooting season as a Celtic with nearly $98 million left on his contract over the next three seasons, so the squinting has already begun.

The apron era spares no one, so once a team believes a player’s production no longer matches the value of his contract, a tough decision has to be made. White isn’t there yet, but every pro athlete in their early 30s is moving in that direction, some just move more slowly than others.

It can be argued that White was still the most important player on the Celtics last season. He’s still an elite defender with incredible timing, and he continues to make incredible plays at the rim that seem impossible for a guard. He was also very good offensively, except for the part where the ball went into the basket. He rarely turns the ball over and when he does he makes up for a lot of those mistakes with a big defensive play on the other end. He is so geared towards making the right play offensively that I think he passes up isolation opportunities against weaker defenders.

White is, in my personal opinion, a damn near perfect basketball player. And still, the shooting is a concern again.

It’s mostly because his shot profile changed so much from his previous seasons in Boston. Of his 437 made baskets, 59% were assisted and 41% were not. The season before that, the split was 68/32. In 2024, it was 61/39. In 2023, it was 67/33. All of this is the result of him having to be a pick-and-roll ball handler more often, a 9% increase from the previous season. His spot-ups dropped by 7%.

White shot 30.4% on pull up jumpers last season. According to Synergy Sports, 56.3% of White’s shots were off the dribble jumpers, a 5% jump from the previous season. He shot a 46.7% effective field goal percentage (“EFG,” a measure that adds weight for three-pointers) on those shots.

At the same time, his catch-and-shoot numbers dropped dramatically. He took those 43% of the time last season, a 20% drop in frequency. He shot a 62% EFG on catch-and-shoot opportunities in 2024-25, good for 1.24 points per shot. Last season that dropped to 47.7% EFG and 0.95 points per shot.

To sum up: He had to do a lot more off the dribble, and that hurt his shooting a lot. The question now is, how much will that change this season, and will the change from playing next to Jayson Tatum versus Jaylen Brown help him?

There is some evidence that playing next to Tatum has been more beneficial to White than playing next to Brown. Two seasons ago, Tatum’s last fully healthy season, lineups with White and Brown without Tatum were +10.5, but with Tatum on and Brown off, the lineups were +14.5, according to Cleaning The Glass. Tatum has also been the number one assister of White’s buckets every full season White has been in Boston.

So if the Celtics can approximate some of that same offense this upcoming season, then maybe we can expect White to bring his shooting up from the depths of 32.7% from three. And to be clear, it won’t take much to make that happen. If White averaged an additional .61 three-point makes per game last season, he would have shot 40%. That is basically one more made three every other game.

Of course, that's not really how it goes. There are hot and cold stretches that have to be managed, and getting more catch-and-shoot chances means a lower possibility of getting into slumps and a higher chance of pulling out of them. That's really where the shot profile shows its importance.

We know White is going to be a defensive demon. There's no amount of squinting and hyper-analyzing that will change that. We know he’s going to make smart decisions and protect the ball. But the Celtics need him to be a good shooter if they're going to make any kind of meaningful noise this season.

The addition of Paul George might not have been satisfying in terms of a return for Jaylen Brown, but having someone who is a known threat in that spot can help get White more spot-ups. The same goes for the improvement in Baylor Scheierman and other bench wings. White has an advantage of entering this season with more certainty than he did last season, which allows him to trust a lot more of his teammates and maybe get away from some of the contested pull-ups he took.

He also has two reliable centers who can take pressure off him on drives. Running pick-and-rolls with Mitchell Robinson opens up more space than he got last season. Neemias Queta is also vastly improved and a known entity this season, so that partnership will be more beneficial.

It’s hard to predict what seasons will look like, especially for a player like White who, on the surface, is entering a season in a very similar position as he was last year. But the familiarity and trust he’s built with his teammates, the type of impact his centers have, and the return of Tatum to start the season give me hope that his shooting can return to, at the very least, an acceptable level. All that, plus an offseason to try to improve some of his pull-up jumper issues, make me optimistic about White returning to his normal self offensively.

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