“He’s the New Chauncey Billups”

Derrick White (9) of the Boston Celtics holds his son Hendrix James after Boston’s 106-88 victory against the Dallas Mavericks in Game Five of the 2024 NBA Finals at TD Garden on June 17, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Adam Glanzman/Getty Images)

Derrick White’s old friends were looking out for him. They watched along with the rest of the world as White landed awkwardly face-first on the court during Game 5 of the NBA Finals, chipping his two front teeth.

By the end of the night, those were the teeth of a champion. As confetti rained down on the Boston Celtics, a fantasy football group text from former college basketball teammates buzzed. Andrew Bucholtz could identify with White’s situation. After they finished playing together at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in the mid-2010s, Bucholtz transferred to Whittier College, where he once chipped his front teeth in a (much less meaningful) game.

First, he made fun of White by asking in the group chat who was doing better. He then gave advice on how to deal with a broken tooth. “Not a fun time,” Bucholtz testifies.

White has maintained friendships with many of his teammates from Legend High School and Division II UCCS, where he got his humble beginnings before blossoming into a first-round draft prospect at CU.

A product of Parker, he made the NBA All-Defensive team in consecutive seasons. Now he’s a champion for the first time after averaging 15.2 points in one of the best statistical starting lineups in recent memory. During a week of celebrations, several of his former teammates shared memories of White’s beginnings in Colorado.

“I think he’s the next Chauncey Billups,” high school teammate Avery Carlson said. “He is the new face of sports in Colorado that is really proud of where he comes from.”

1. Volunteer for Violations

Smarts and a sense of humor were essential qualities during White’s unorthodox prep basketball experience.

He was in the first graduating class at Legend High School, which opened its freshman year with its first sports teams composed entirely of athletes from his class. The varsity basketball team was a few sizes too small for most games, especially that first season. Carlson was a self-described “way too small center” on a roster that only had a handful of players capable of working their way through the position.

“We were kind of like deer in the headlights against those (bigger) teams,” Carlson said. “But D-White didn’t really have that. He just shrugged it off.”

Hacking was often an unavoidable defensive strategy for Carlson, but Legend couldn’t afford mistakes in the frontcourt. So the shorter, thinner White developed a habit of fooling referees by counting fouls against him instead.

“I’ve probably made more mistakes than points in our basketball games. I committed the foul, and then he raised his hand and said, ‘That was me,'” Carlson recalled. “The referee had to laugh a bit about it. But sometimes they gave it to him. Basically he was just trying to keep me in the game. I think he thought, ‘Oh, this doll has made another mistake.’

2. Without a red shirt

White’s well-documented lack of college offers led him to a $3,000 scholarship as the preferred walk-on at UCCS. His talent and IQ were clearly visible, but the team’s vision was for him to complement his frame while redshirting his freshman year. Preseason training forced a change in plans.

“It was like he was born to play basketball,” said Jordan Carter, who was entering his freshman year at the time. “He was just so much better than the rest of us. There was no way we could stop him. We were much bigger and stronger. It didn’t matter. His team would win every practice.”

Carter had played alongside White for the first time earlier that summer in a pro-am league at Highlands Ranch High School. White had just graduated from Legend. Their first match ended in sudden-death overtime, and White drained a step-back 3-pointer for the win. As Carter watched the shot, he thought to himself that he was never confident enough to attempt something like that right out of high school.

“Once practice started and the scrimmages started, (White) was just destroying the first team, the starters,” teammate Dalton Patten recalled. “Getting anything and everything he wanted. And we had exhibition games at that time, and redshirts could play in those games without having to have an entire season of eligibility. So of course he played, and it was exactly the same. He wasn’t redshirting after that.”

By the end of the season, White was crowned the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year.

3. Cereal and Oreos

White and five of his UCCS teammates lived together in a house across the street from campus and spent their free time playing video games and ping pong. After early morning practices, they returned home, and White prepared his daily bowl of cereal and then hung out in the living room. His friends were often amazed at how methodical his routine was.

“It took him forever to eat his bowl of cereal,” Alex Koehler said with a laugh. “He sat on the couch scrolling on his phone for 30 to 45 minutes before he finally finished that bowl of cereal.”

“It looked like it just sat in the bowl and got soggy,” Patten added. “He probably spends all his time joking around.”

White’s dietary habits also include keeping a specific snack in his car. One of his UCCS teammates was recently contacted by a Celtics fan who was brainstorming possible gifts to present to White during the championship parade in Boston. He suggested they buy him Oreo cookies.

“I remember him taking us to practice, and he had Oreos in the glove compartment,” Carter said.

4. The Kobe Bryant of video games

White is known for being unflappable on the field and gentle off it. He and the Celtics were businesslike in their clinical dominance in the NBA playoffs. His presence was exactly the same as that of an amateur player in Colorado. Stoic, mature, relaxed. Not that kind of trash talk.

Except in pretty much everything else outside of competitive basketball.

“If you let him get started with FIFA…” Bucholtz warned as he stayed away.

‘That guy just wants to beat you. He just wants to destroy you,” Patten said. “But you can never be mad at him because he’s such a good person.”

White played intramural softball with Koehler and a few other teammates in the offseason. When they won, he always made sure the rest of the basketball team knew about it. He was a fierce yapper at the ping-pong table and even more competitive in Xbox games like NBA 2K and his beloved FIFA. Whenever one person beat all the others in the house in the football video game, he earned the title “The Sheriff.” White enjoyed it. He still talks trash in a fantasy football group chat with his former teammates.

“He had a remarkable ability to remember what kind of scoring run his team was on,” Carter said. “Some of the things you hear Kobe Bryant and those guys say in NBA games, that’s the kind of thing Derrick would say on 2K.”

5. Derrick White’s first epic block

In an NBA Finals that generally lacked memorable last-minute theatrics, White was responsible for one of the series’ signature moments when he and Jaylen Brown chased down PJ Washington for a clutch block with 50 seconds left in Game 2. White finished the playoffs with 23 blocks – the most of any non-center – cementing his reputation as the best shot-blocking guard in the NBA.

It all started in Colorado.

At UCCS, Bucholtz remembers White getting yelled at for chasing blocks, occasionally being overzealous in his weak help defense.

“He would kind of do what he does now and just try to block things,” Bucholtz said. “He wasn’t really a defensive guy at UCCS just because he had to carry most of the offensive load. The one game we put him on the best player, he immediately picked up two fouls, and then he never guarded the best player for the rest of that year, or so it felt. But you could tell he was a good shot blocker.”

The precise origins of that skill are murky — “I have to admit, I don’t remember him blocking a single shot in high school,” said legend teammate Brad Dalby — but they can at least be traced back to one specific rejection.

Carlson remembers it vividly, probably because he was on the wrong side. During a one-on-one fast-break drill before their freshman year at Legend, just as White was getting a little bigger, Carlson tried to confront him at the rim.

“We’re all trying to deceive each other,” he said. “But (White) definitely bundled me up. I mean, he grabbed the basketball in his hand, ripped it apart and just dribbled away. I kind of ended up on the ground. At that moment I thought, ‘Oh, he’s on another level.’ It was just a surgical procedure, his posture.”

6. The superstar role player

White and Bucholtz became embroiled in dozens of silly semantic debates about various sports. Most importantly, they were both huge Nuggets fans. White’s first year at UCCS coincided with a 57-win Nuggets team that featured Andre Iguodala in his lone season in Denver.