The Boston Celtics are so deep, even their bench players are winning awards.
Backup point guard Derrick White won Eastern Conference Player of the Week, filling in for the injured Marcus Smart. Smart has missed the last ten games with an ankle sprain, and White has stepped into the starting lineup. Boston has won four in a row and six of their last seven with White running the show, and he was especially good last week.
White averaged 24.5 points and 7.5 assists during the four-game stretch, including a 33-point, 10-assist effort against Charlotte where White sunk eight three-pointers. For the week, he was a scorching 17-33 from deep, and paired his 30 assists with just six turnovers.
Coming over after a midseason trade from San Antonio last year, White fit in well with the Celtics’ defensive mindset, and was one of Boston’s only two trusted reserves in the Finals, along with Grant Williams.
This year, his shooting has taken a huge leap forward. He’s making 39.3 percent of his deep attempts this year, compared to 30.6 percent last year. Even his two-point percentage has ticked up from 50.4 percent to 52.5 percent, making him a serious threat if teams focus too much on Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown.
While White is nominally the third guard behind Brown and Smart, he’s started 49 games, second-most on the team behind Tatum. And the fourth guard is no slouch either. Malcolm Brogdon is making 45.2 percent of his threes, and like White, averaging 3.7 assists per game. Brogdon turned it up in the month of January, scoring 17.3 points per game, with less than a turnover each game.
Perhaps Brogdon will get his own chance at Player of the Week if the Celtics’ injury woes continue — or Tatum accidentally elbows another teammate. (Tatum said “I need to buy him a car” after fracturing Brown’s face.) But if Boston’s sixth man is a Player of the Week, they’re going to be tough to beat this spring.
