Cavaliers Coach Thinks This Role Player is a Top 5 NBA Player

When you think about the top players in the NBA the same names come to mind. Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are probably the top two. Then you have guys like Victor Wembanyama, Luka Doncic, Anthony Edwards, and Giannis Antetokounmpo. However, if you asked every player or coach in the league to name their top-5 NBA players right now, almost every list would look a little different. 

Still, there are certain names that just aren’t likely to come up in the conversation. Derrick White is one of those names. While White has proved himself an elite defender and playmaker on offense, he’s never made an All-Star team. This season, he is helping lead the Celtics to a surprisingly successful campaign to the top of the Eastern Conference. Still, a top-5 player in the league? That seems like a stretch. 

Not for Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson. Atkinson called White a top-5 player in the league and laid some heavy praise on him during a recent press conference. 

"What probably people aren't measuring is his defensive impact ... analytically, I think it's probably proven in various places that he is that player and that's how we treat him…He really disrupts you defensively, he's an elite rim protector. Probably the best guard, rim protector in the league. So just take all those things and put it in there and with the shooting, you got a great player." 

White doesn’t put up the type of numbers for most people to consider him one of the league’s top players. That being said, defensive impact is undervalued in those conversations and that’s where White thrives. So maybe White isn’t as valuable as Stephen Curry or Luka Doncic, but he is still a criminally underrated impact player.