There’s still plenty of intrigue left for the final month of the NBA season, but a lot has already been decided, and with a third of the league tanking, it feels like a lot of the discourse is dominated by things like potential playoff matchups and awards talk.
The MVP talk has already gotten fairly exhausting, and there aren’t many crazy races at stake (apologies to the Rookie of the Year battle between Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel), but the fights to the finish for those precious All-NBA and All-Defense spots are certainly heating up down the stretch.
The Celtics should have a lock for the All-NBA teams in Jaylen Brown, but they also have a great candidate for All-Defense in Derrick White. On the most recent episode of the Lowe Post podcast, Zach had on a former NBA executive for the Grizzlies, John Hollinger, to pick their All-Defense teams.
John and Zach talked about how the teams have become positionless, and it’s hard to avoid loading up on big men, who ostensibly tend to hold more importance when it comes to building a defense.
But Hollinger made a great point that the positional value has to come into play, as traditionally we think of centers as anchors of a defense, but the advantage gained from having an elite defensive center versus an average center may not be as great as the advantage an elite guard or wing creates versus a league-average defender at their position.
John Hollinger picks Derrick White for first-team All-Defense
And that rings especially true when it comes to the backcourt and smaller guards in general. That’s where D-White thrives, and that’s why Hollinger picked him for his first-team All-Defense, the only guard that either John or Zach selected.
They pointed out how he’s by far the best rim-protecting guard in the league, and one of the best of all players. He does so much for the defense, on and off the ball, and is so cerebral on that end of the floor; he has led the Celtics to having one of the best defenses in the league.
Thanks to the way the game is played and teams are built, White will probably never win a DPOY Award over the elite defensive centers like Victor Wembanyama, Rudy Gobert, Chet Holmgren, and others.
But the league is full of undersized, offense-first point guards, and White creates a greater advantage for his team on the defensive end compared to other players at his position than even the best big men in the league do at theirs.