What Celtics reportedly sought from teams in potential Derrick White trade
White was rumored to be a trade candidate during the 2025 NBA Draft, but there reportedly wasn't a deal close to happening involving him.
Celtics vice president of basketball operations Mike Zarren wanted to make it clear that the team never came close to trading Derrick White during the 2025 NBA Draft on Thursday. However, they were apparently willing to tell teams what it would take to land the standout guard.
Boston told a rival team that it sought a “Mikal Bridges-type” offer for White in the leadup to the 2025 NBA Draft, The Stein Line‘s Jake Fischer reported Saturday.
In case you need a refresher, the Knicks gave up four unprotected first-round picks, a top-four protected first-round pick, an unprotected first-round pick, a second-round pick, and three veteran players (Bojan Bogdanovic, Mamadi Diakite, Shake Milton) to acquire Bridges from the Nets in the 2024 offseason.
As the Celtics had a potentially exorbitant asking price for White, trade talks involving the two-time All-Defensive honoree never “got serious,” according to Fischer.
“Those two guys are really, really great NBA players, and there hasn’t been anything close to serious about trading them,” Zarren said on Thursday, including Celtics star Jaylen Brown in that statement. “I’m not sure where all this reporting came from, but those guys are key parts of our team, and we’re lucky to have them here.”
In the lead-up to the first round of the draft on Wednesday, rumors heated up that teams were making strong offers to the Celtics for White and Brown. In fact, teams that had a top-10 pick in the 2025 draft were among those making offers to the Celtics for those two players, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst.
The Raptors, who had the No. 9 pick in the 2025 draft, were reportedly among the known teams pursuing White. However, the Celtics weren’t interested in their initial offer, according to The Ringer’s Zach Lowe.
“There were reports that the Raptors offered the No. 9 pick for Derrick White,” Lowe said on his podcast. “I’m told that’s true, but that it happened a month and a half ago after Jayson Tatum got hurt and Boston laughed at that offer and said we need way more than No. 9 for Derrick White.”
Toronto is in possession of all of its first-round picks through 2032, so it could’ve made a Bridges-like offer for White. It obviously still can do that if it’d like to, but it also parted ways with longtime team president Masai Ujiri on Friday. So, it might not be willing to make a massive trade like that as it searches for its next head of basketball operations.
White, who’ll turn 31 on Wednesday, has arguably been the Celtics’ third-best player over the last two seasons. He averaged 16.4 points, 4.8 assists, 4.5 rebounds, 1.1 blocks, and 0.9 steals per game this past season.
Even though White has been essential to the Celtics’ success since they traded for him in 2022, he’s been speculated as a trade candidate this season due to Boston’s salary situation. He’s entering the first year of a four-year, $125.9 million extension, holding a $28.1 million salary for the 2025-26 season.
But it’s pretty clear that it’s going to take a lot for the Celtics to part with White. In fact, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens included him when he said who the core of the team was when asked following the first round of the draft on Wednesday.
“We’ll do our best to put the right group together,” Stevens told reporters on Wednesday. “We’ve got the foundation, obviously, with Jaylen and Jayson [Tatum] and D-White and Payton [Pritchard] and all those guys that a lot of teams would love to have.”
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