What can I do in just 3 seconds? Derek White gave the answer.
Give out sideline ball, run empty space to prepare for receive the ball shots, rush to the basket immediately after Marcus Smart Shot and fight for the offensive rebound and complete the patch. In 3 seconds, White made all the right choices, and he also got the favor of lucky goddess.
104-103, the Celts finished the dramatic killing in the 6th game of the Eastern finals, from 0-3 to 3-3, and the seven will return to the home court of the Celts, celtics are only one victory away from achieving the unprecedented 0-3 plot twist.
Thanks to White, the Celtics can approach the miracle. In the process of Celtics pulling three cities, White changed from a dragon suit to a leading role. In the fourth game, White scored 16 points. In the fifth game, he scored 6 points and 24 points. In the sixth game, he contributed 11 points, 6 assists, 3 cap plus a killing worth thousands of dollars.
“Dare to achieve greatness” is White’s motto on the basketball Road. This small defender, who is only 1.93 meters tall and relatively thin, contains huge energy in his body. He interprets the motto with unyielding fighting spirit. Therefore, White went back to NBA from NCAA secondary league and became an indispensable puzzle for Celts.
As for White’s inspirational story, there have been many deep excavations during the finals last year. White is really the most inconspicuous existence in the US talent pool with powerful hematopoietic function.
White was only 1.80 meters tall when he graduated from high school, and no team offered him a scholarship. Samsung high school students may not be able to play NCAA, let alone White who is not a star. White’s father Richard White thought his son’s basketball path might be over, and he didn’t think he could see his son in the official game in the future.
Similarly, when graduating from high school, he was short and thin. Lillard and mccolum got at least NCAA first-class league scholarship, but White could only go to NCAA second-class league team, University of Colorado Springs, play with a small number of accommodation subsidies. When White went to participate in the NBA joint trial in 2017, he still owed the student loan of the school.
White’s height soared after entering the university, and soon reached 1.93 meters. Its data continued to improve, with 25.8 points, 7.3 rebounds and 5.2 assists in the junior three games. However, the data of the second-level league is really not of great reference value. In order to impact NBA, White chose to transfer to NCAA first-level league team Colorado University.
In the higher level of the game, White was still strong, with an average of 18.1 points, 4.1 rebounds and 4.4 assists in the 2016-17 season, and was selected as the best team and the best defensive team in the Pac-12 league. In the past 20 years, only three people had at least 18 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists. In addition to White, the other two were Fultz and Wade. The former is the No. 5 show.
When White took part in the draft in 2017, Popovich baby didn’t know white at all. What he dug out was Brian Wright, who was still the assistant general manager of Spurs at that time. He persuaded General manager Buford to choose white with the 29th sign in the first round.
White has made rapid progress in his Spurs career in four and a half years. However, due to the adjustment of the development route Spurs in the 2021-22 season, the management of Spurs sent White to the Celtics with pain. White joined the Celtics and immediately helped the team enter the finals, unfortunately, Celts lost to Stephen Curry.
In the last year, White’s main keyword was “evolution”. The data of White games averaged 12.4 points, 3.6 rebounds and 3.9 assists in the regular season is still insignificant, but its real hit rate exceeded 60%. On the defensive end, White entered the best defensive lineup (second team) for the first time in his career.
The biggest improvement of White’s offensive end this season is that the shooting ability of receive the ball has made great progress. Last season’s three-point shooting rate of receive the ball in the playoffs was only 29.4%, but this season’s regular season has increased to nearly 40%, the playoffs reached 45.8 percent. Last year’s Warriors dared to challenge White’s vacancy, but this year White has made his opponent pay a painful price many times in the three-round playoffs.
White is not the second generation of the ball, but he has a father who is obsessed with data analysis. Richard was born in IT. He analyzed baseball and basketball data through computer professional skills. When White graduated from high school, he edited 50 White’s competition clips everywhere. Richard once said that if there were sports data analysis in that year, he would definitely devote himself to this field. Unfortunately, Richard didn’t borrow the east wind of the times. Now he studies data analysis in his spare time to help his son evolve.
In the ranking of various versions of high-order integrated data (measuring player influence), White ranked roughly in the league’s 30th place, and in the Celtics, he was overpowered by Jay Brown. Gary Dubin, an American data analysis expert, once wrote that White was not a super star, but higher-level data thought its influence was super star level. This conclusion is too exaggerated to be accepted by many people, but it also reflects the importance of white from another angle.
The progress of shooting depends on hard training to form muscle memory, while the improvement of defense depends on the progress of consciousness. Richard believes that observing the game with his eyes must be biased and the data is more objective. He will send the data analysis results of his research to his son for reference. Sometimes, when the database update is slow, Richard will complain through social media that the update is too slow to affect his analysis.
“My dad is a data fan. He likes to study data and enjoys it.” White said.
Richard’s data analysis report to his son helped white improve his ability to make offensive fouls and enhance his defensive oppression. Among the players whose height is no more than 2 meters 01, the number of times White matches interfere with the opponent’s shooting ranks the fourth.
“If you open any media, they will only tell you how many points Dong cheqi, James and Tatum got, and rarely dig defense data.” Richard explained, “You can’t defend against your opponent during defense, but the more you interfere with your opponent’s shooting, the lower your opponent’s shooting rate will be.”
In the playoffs this season, White limited the field goal percentage of counterplayers to 40.7, with a three-point hit rate of only 29.5%.
Especially in the Eastern finals, Richard’s idea was confirmed. In the first five games, when white faced Butler, Butler shot more than 50%. But in the sixth game, Butler didn’t score a goal when facing White’s defense. As long as the interference is in place, the opponent always fails to enter. Game 6 directly lowered Butler’s data when facing White. After 6 games, Butler made a total of 31 votes and 12 hits against white, with a hit rate of 38.7%, he was sealed by White four times.
In the fifth session of the Eastern finals, White received a text message from Richard when entering the stadium, with only four letters of “DTBG.
White knew what it meant. The initial letter of “Dare To Be Great” meant daring To achieve greatness. He always wore a wristband with these four letters on his wrist, he has played every time since he was 8 years old with this belief.
White not only wants to inspire himself with this belief, but also wants to inspire his descendants.
“Lillard, Curry and so on, there are many great players from primary schools, but they have become all stars. They are all my examples. There are a lot of players who come from second-level league and have not been recruited. If I can be their example, that would be great.”
“Never give up your dream. As long as you stick to it, basketball God will not treat you badly.”