By the time the All-Star reserves were announced on Sunday night, it had become pretty clear that Derrick White wasn’t going to make the team. In the conventional sense, he doesn’t have a great case. His counting stats are pretty pedestrian (17.2 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 5.4 apg), and he has been mired in a shooting slump for much of the season now (39.1% FG & 32.2% 3-PT FG), but the Celtics and their fans know his impact goes way beyond the box score.
Joe Mazzulla and anyone within the organization will outwardly suggest that they don’t care at all about the All-Star team. Still, internally, I’m sure it hasn’t gone unnoticed that the Celtics are currently the two seed in the Eastern Conference (pending the result of the Knicks’ Sunday night game vs. the Lakers) and have drastically exceeded expectations with a 31-18 record. Yet, they only had one player named to the All-Star Game.
The other top three teams in the conference, the Pistons and Knicks, each have multiple All-Stars, as Detroit has Cade Cunningham starting and Jalen Duren coming off the bench, and New York has Jalen Brunson in the starting lineup and Karl-Anthony Towns named as a reserve.
Boston is right there at the top of the conference, but still, they didn’t get the same recognition. This is just more fuel to add to the fire and another piece of bulletin-board material for a team that has thrived on proving the doubters wrong.
Derrick White All-Star exclusion one more chip on the shoulder
The Celtics have been ruled out since the second that Jayson Tatum tore his achilles, and they’ve used the naysayers as motivation every step of the way. Everyone on this team has something to prove and a chip on their shoulder, and this is just one more thing to add to the mix.
Jaylen Brown had to prove he could be a number one option, Joe Mazzulla had to prove he could win without a “superteam”, Payton Pritchard had to prove he could be an impact starter, Neemias Queta had to prove he was a starting center, most other guys had to prove they were even worthy of rotation minutes, and on and on it goes.
Maybe Derrick White didn’t have anything to prove, but you can bet it would have been gratifying for him to be recognized as an All-Star. The two-way impact he has on the Celtics can’t possibly be overstated, and there’s no way this team is experiencing this level of success without him.
But again, the stats just haven’t been there, and historically, that’s tough to overcome when it comes to All-Stars. So, I’m not surprised. But I am disappointed. If anyone was going to recognize what Derrick brings, I figured it was the coaches, who are responsible for choosing the All-Star reserves.
The coaches opted to go with guys putting up bigger numbers on lesser teams like Pascal Siakam in Indiana (the Pacers are 13-36 on the season), Jalen Johnson in Atlanta (the Hawks are 24-27), and Norman Powell in Miami (the Heat are 26-24), and that’s perfectly fine, because it’s one more thing that the Celtics get to use as inspiration.