BOSTON — Derrick White has become the most discussed Celtics player in trade chatter after Boston coughed up a 3-1 lead to the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, and the conversation only sharpened as Jayson Tatum’s injury complicated the 2025-26 campaign. White is still valued as one of the league’s best perimeter defenders, but his name is now at the center of a debate about whether Boston should keep its core intact or use him to upgrade elsewhere.
White is coming off a regular season in which he averaged 16.5 points, 5.4 assists and 4.4 rebounds, and he finished sixth in Defensive Player of the Year voting. He will be 32 next season, and his salary rises to $30.35 million in 2026-27, making him one of the more movable veteran pieces if Boston decides to shake up the roster.
The appeal for rival teams is obvious. Kawhi Leonard, a two-time NBA Finals MVP, still has one year left on his $150 million contract and just played 65 games while averaging 27.9 points per game, 6.4 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.9 steals. He shot 50.5 percent from the field and nearly 39 percent from three-point range on close to seven tries per outing, numbers that would give any team a different kind of scoring force on the wing.
That is where the Celtics’ thinking gets complicated. In a trade built around White and Leonard, Boston would have to find another $20 million or so in salary to send to the Clippers, and it might also need to include a future first-round pick or pick swap. That is a steep price for a team that is already being pushed to solve a simple problem: the third-best player on the roster has to create more offense.
White’s efficiency dipped because the load on him grew. He took 14.4 shots per game, the most of his career, but made 39.4 percent of his field-goal attempts and 32.7 percent of his three-point attempts. Even so, the defense held, and the front office is now being asked whether it is wiser to sell high on a player who remains extremely valuable than to keep betting that the offense will improve around him.
That is the friction inside the rumor. Boston is unlikely to move Tatum or Jaylen Brown, which leaves White as one of the few players good enough to headline a meaningful deal and movable enough to make the math work. Ben Handler argued on Sunday, May 3, that selling high on White is not a crazy idea, and that is the kind of sentence that gets louder when a contender has already seen one lead slip away and another season bend around injury.
The Celtics do not have to trade White, but the pressure point is clear: if they want another scorer, the price may be their most reliable two-way guard and the draft capital to go with him.
