Nekias Duncan and Steve Jones Jr. explain why White would be their top pick in a role player draft, Check out the full conversation on “The Dunker Spot” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
Advertisement
Video Transcript
How did you decide, like, what was kind of like your personal cutoff to like who’s a role player versus like who is high impact guy that may have, may have graduated out of that class?
Or did you think– How, how did you kinda come up with your list of guys?
I mean, I think for me, one, it’s hard to quantify exactly who is in the role player discussion to a degree.
you got high impact prospects, you got scorers, and so I think it’s a little outdated to a degree.
But for me, it’s like, okay, who are the people that are the kind of the fabric of their team to where people may not understand just how important they are to this team, and understanding how they help their team win on a nightly basis, and the versatility that they possess to do different things.
Advertisement
And so I think like, if you score X amount, doesn’t mean you’re not a role player, but you kinda have your specific lane, your specific role.
And for me, it’s kind of trying to figure out how do we define these players because it’s– they aren’t just that role.
They are talented players who can do more, but they have an understanding, the self-awareness to, okay, I need to do this for my team every single night.
I need to sacrifice a little bit, but I still have the self-belief, the skill to kind of put things together in a different way that makes me– that separates me from other people, to where I’m having an impact every single night for this team.
Advertisement
Even if it feels like I defer, maybe you don’t– you’re talking about other people on my team, you have to realize how important I am.
So for me, it’s like Derrick White, everyone wants to use advanced metrics to be like, he’s a top five player, and then people wanna look at his box score and say, “Well, he’s shooting this,” and that’s not what Derrick White is.
He’s a night-in, night-out like defensive menace who takes care of the ball every single night offensively, doesn’t turn it over, and he does whatever’s needed to do for the Boston Celtics to win.
Like Josh Hart, every spring it’s like, well, why is Josh Hart starting?
Advertisement
‘Cause he’s kind of the m– like he’s the force behind the Knicks as far as defensively getting them to a compete level, can guard anyone, will do anything on the weak side.
And then offensively, whatever you need me to do, I’m gonna get it done.
Jaden McDaniels, a force for the Wolves.
His versatility and when he makes it simple and plays hard, it’s different.
Al Horford, we know he’s championship quality.
Same thing for Marcus Smart.
So for me, it was just like trying to understand the impactful players that do things that I don’t know if we can measure, which it gets really interesting in this, in today’s day and age of we can measure everything.
So that’s kinda where my mind was at.