Derrick White should be an all-star. His traditional numbers do not necessarily tell an all-star story, but his impact on the court does. His advanced metrics are exceptional, when he plays, no one is saying he doesn’t pass the eye test, and in discourse there have even been suggestions that he is more important than Jayson Tatum. While a lot of this is subject to hyperbole, the case exists and I intend to make it.
Last season, only two players would average less than 20 points on the season and make the all-star game, the lowest number being Jaren Jackson Jr’s 18.6 per game. In 2022, there were 4, the lowest being Rudy Gobert’s 15.1, and in 2021 there were 3, the lowest being Rudy Gobert’s 14.3. While these stats are not perfect analogues to what the players were averaging at the all-star selection time, there are good indicators of what coaches might be willing to evaluate for in selecting the final spots. Scoring is obviously not the end all be all. Looking at our 8 under 20 spots, Rudy Gobert takes 2, Chris Paul takes 2, and the rest of the list is filled out by Mike Conley, Andrew Wiggins, Jarrett Allen, Damontas Sabonis, and Jaren Jackson Jr. 4 of these are bigs who were in the defensive player of the year race. While Derrick White is exceptional defensively, he is for the most part not considered the best defensive guard on his own team, let alone the best at it in the league by enough to steal what has traditionally been an award reserved for bigs. Wiggins largely got in via the voting process and likely would not have made the team as a coach selected reserve. This makes him a rather poor analogue for a guy like Derrick White who is actually good at basketball but plays on a team with relatively low national popularity. Sabonis is also tricky because it was so clear his play was what had elevated his team. Derrick White has been on the Celtics a few years and there are bigger names on the roster ahead of him. Chris Paul also looks like a very strong analogue, but ultimately Chris Paul’s gaudy assist numbers year after year, combined with an impeccable reputation for winning can carry him more than it can Derrick. His best comparison is going to be Mike Conley. While this is obviously a fringe case, clearly there is some precedent for a player with his numbers to be selected into the game.
White’s numbers are very good but generally below the level we expect from all-stars. Mike Conley benefitted similarly in 2021. When Mike Conley was named an all-star, the Jazz were 27-9, on pace to win 60 games in a traditional season. Despite only producing what would eventually be averages of 16.2/3.5/6.0 on the season, Mike Conley was given a spot as an all-star reserve. The league essentially answered the question of “why are the Jazz so good this year?” with “because Mike Conley is one of the 30 best players in the league, regardless of his numbers.”
Are the Celtics good enough this year for the league to answer similarly about Derrick? Part of the problem for Derrick might be that his team has too much traditional star power. Derrick White is the only Celtics starter to have never played an all-star game. While nobody is arguing Jrue Holiday has been better than him this year, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Kristaps Porzingis might be. Jayson Tatum will start again, there is very little doubt about this. Jaylen Brown is also a virtual lock as a reserve. This leaves the conditions for Derrick to become an all-star as either the Celtics are given a third spot and he beats out Porzingis, or they are so good that they receive 4 all-stars.
The last time a team received 3 all-stars was the 2021 game when the Nets sent Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden and the Jazz sent Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, and Mike Conley. Across the last 10 games, 8 teams have sent 3 players, 3 teams have sent 4. This is good for the Derrick White case. While some of the 8 teams that sent 3 have overlapped, the data still suggests that more often than not there is a team that sends 3 players to the all-star game. While that doesn’t have to be the case this year, the obvious choice would be the Celtics. They are currently on a 66 win pace despite a top 5 hardest schedule to date, are undefeated at home, and are 15-1 with their starting lineup healthy. For some context, the Brooklyn Nets big 3 mentioned above went 13-3 in their 16 games together. Obviously a starting 5 says more than just 3 players, but the stat is impressive nonetheless. While there are a handful of other good teams around, none are really getting 3 players into all-star discussions. The Timberwolves probably get the closest with a similar win rate, nearly guaranteed spots for Anthony Edwards and Rudy Gobert, with maybe a fringe argument for Mike Conley to get another appearance.
It is not clear how to argue Porzingis versus White if they are limited to 3 spots. Porzingis averages 3 more points on 1 fewer shots, 2.6 stocks to 2.5, and 7 rebounds to 4. Assists are heavily in White’s favor (5.2 to 1.7) and they average the same amount of turnovers. Advanced metrics love both of them and they are both incredibly valuable players to the Celtics scheme. What Kristaps provides in screens and as a dump option on offense is absurdly valuable but so is White making incredibly quick decisions and pressuring advantage situations to create the best looks for the entire roster. White has the advantage as well of playing more games which I think will likely be rewarded by coaches, but I have a hard time saying one of them has definitely been better than the other if the Celtics are only given 3 spots and think this is basically a toss-up that can very easily go to Derrick White.
What about 4? Two of the three teams that sent 4 were the Kevin Durant Warriors. While those teams won at a similar rate to the current Celtics, the understanding of their relative skill was a little different. The Warriors had sent three players in 2016 and then added Kevin Durant and dropped a few wins but ran roughshod through the playoffs every year. Coaches seemed to accept this and weighted the regular season drop less heavily. The other team was the 2015 Hawks. At the all-star break in 2015, the Hawks were 41-11, a 65 win pace. While this is exceptional and potentially an argument for the Celtics to receive a 4th player as well, the analogue isn’t perfect. Not a single player on their roster averaged over 17 points per game that season. Despite cries that Jayson Tatum has been underwhelming and even some particularly unhinged takes that he has fallen out of the top 10 players in the league, he is still clearly a player that single handedly elevates a team. The Hawks 4 all-stars appear more as a recognition from the league that the team was exceptionally good at winning games despite a lack of star power and a desire to reward that. On a team with traditional star power (two of the All-NBA players from the previous season), this is less likely to be rewarded.
So let’s make the case that this team actually deserves to be rewarded like the KD Warriors were. I’m going to reference last week’s post about winning and treat the general framework that wins can be indicative of individual performance as accurate. The Celtics players fit into roughly 6 tiers in my mind.
1
Jayson Tatum
2
Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Kristaps Porzingis
3
Jrue Holiday
4
Al Horford, Sam Hauser
5
Payton Pritchard, Luke Kornet, Neemias Queta, Oshae Brisset
6
Everyone else
Not everyone in every tier is equal obviously, Jaylen Brown is clearly 2A and Al Horford is 4A, but in terms of impact on the team this seems to be the clearest way to sort them in my head. The emphasis I think is worth drawing is that there are 7 players in the top 4 tiers and from what we’ve seen this season, no one in tier 5 or 6 is good enough to play meaningful playoff minutes. When assessing “wins are a team stat” claims, the entire team contributing to wins appears to be those top 4 tiers. Jayson Tatum is also widely understood to be having a down year. While I don’t necessarily think this is meaningful in assessing general player ability, it is meaningful in figuring out how to attribute wins this season. If Jayson Tatum is not considered the current frontrunner for MVP, the wins need to be attributed among the other 6 of the top 7 in a way that adds up to the dominance we are seeing. The way this makes most sense is to have 4 all-stars. Hauser is a good role player but is incredibly streaky. Al Horford and Jrue Holiday are both excellent, but neither of them has contributed much to scoring this season and have primarily been valuable for their elite defense. While Jaylen Brown is playing the best basketball of his career, I would not raise him into the top 15 yet (though he can absolutely be that high if he keeps up his current level all year) and his first ~10 games were very rough and that has to contribute to analysis this early in the season. This leaves Kristaps and Derrick. Both of them might be incredibly high tier role players, but once we reach what we were calling “+60” last week, we start hitting fringe all-stars. The bar between the highest tier starters to all-star reserves is rather thin.
The point I am getting at here is that traditionally the teams on the current pace the Celtics are, team success wise, are usually insanely deep. Those teams almost always have an MVP finalist, often the MVP, at least one more all-star, and then 7 more starter level players with 2-3 more solid bench level players This was the rough formula for the 2016 Warriors. The Celtics don’t have that. While Al Horford and Sam Hauser might be able to start for some teams, they also might just be bench level players and the bottom of the Celtics roster are generally just bad. This requires the success to be mostly frontloaded and the most frontloaded players on the team are probably producing at lower levels than they normally would. The only conclusion left is that the middle tiers of Celtics players are wildly overperforming the traditional value of a “4th” or “5th” option. This situates the Celtics somewhere in between the Warriors and the Hawks but potentially just as deserving of a 4th all-star. They likely need to kick up their win-rate a little bit, but if the moment comes that the coaches make their selections and the Celtics are on a 67-69 win pace, the case becomes very strong.
I’m not going to make a prediction here, but I will say this. The Celtics clearly deserve a third all-star and arguably deserve a fourth. If they don’t get the third, Celtics fans should be angry. In either case, there is a very strong argument that Derrick deserves the third spot and would certainly deserve the fourth. Derrick White for All-Star, 2024.