His basketball card belongs in the Louvre, posted up between the Mona Lisa and “The Wedding Feast at Cana.”
You could hang Chauncey Billups’ resume in the Salle des Etats, elbows jostling with “La Bella Nani,” a work of hoops art on par with “Titian’s Man with a Glove.”
But Paris?
Derrick White will always have Paris. Always.
“Yeah, it’s been wild,” Richard White, father of the former CU Buffs and Legend High School great, told me by phone earlier this week as he packed for Europe. “A lot of things have kind of fallen into place.
“He’s just a kid from Parker. He’s kind of bringing Parker to the forefront.”
And to the world. The argument as to the greatest men’s basketball player ever to hail from the 5,280 starts and ends with Billups. Mr. Big Shot’s legacy is framed by a path of pure gold, from George Washington High to the NBA and the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
But never the Olympic Summer Games. When two of the greatest to ever call greater Denver home compare scars someday, White can point to 2024, to France, to the best summer of his basketball life.
Of anybody’s basketball life, come to think of it.
“It’s pretty good,” Richard chuckled. “You walk around town now and everybody congratulates you for Derrick.”
The kids across the street from the White house put red, white and blue out on the sidewalk in honor of Derrick’s selection to Team USA last week. This past Thursday, what had been rumored for almost a month became official — the Boston Celtics guard, fresh off winning his first NBA title, was announced as a roster replacement for Kawhi Leonard.
Richard said Derrick found out last Tuesday. He sent a text to his family the next day.
“They want me to be on USA Basketball,” Derrick thumbed. “I got the call last night.”
On Sunday, around 2:30 in the morning, he landed in Abu Dhabi for Team USA’s training camp. When you’re living a dream, life comes at you fast.
“He’s excited,” Richard gushed. “It’s a huge opportunity.”
White’s slated to become the third ex-CU Buff to grace the Team USA roster at the Olympics, and the first since 1960, when Burdette Haldorson won gold at the Rome games. Great as “Burdie” was, though, with no disrespect to the dearly departed Phillips 66er of the National Industrial Basketball League, Haldorson didn’t represent the USA and notch an NBA title in the same summer.
Richard actually got to carry the Larry O’Brien Trophy — “It is substantial, it felt good to hold it,” he laughed — last month after Derrick and his Celtics teammates knocked off Dallas, 4-1.
Following the on-court victory celebration, Celtic families took turns holding the trophy during photo ops at TD Garden, just as the Nuggets had done a year earlier inside the bowels of Ball Arena after their Game 5 Finals clincher.
And speaking of Miami, Derrick’s dad raised some eyebrows along South Beach last month when he trolled Heat star Jimmy Butler with a post on the “X” social platform. Richard’s picture, posted after the Celtics knocked off the Mavs, shows Derrick and his dad cradling the Eastern Conference Finals trophy, with the caption, “Holding the next one was even better. Did I do it right, Jimmy?”
The quote was in reference to the Heat’s celebration on Boston’s court in Game 7 of the Eastern finals in ’23, as the No. 8 seed upset an injured Celtics roster to force a showdown with the Nuggets for the league crown. Heat center Bam Adebayo during the postgame offered to let Butler grasp the Eastern trophy, only for the latter to decline, saying, “I’ll hold the next one.”
As Nuggets fans know full well, that “next one” never came.
“It’s all well and good to do a Joe Namath,” Richard said. “Jimmy Butler was saying he was going to do this and he’s going to do that. But Joe Namath won. If you don’t win, you’re going open yourself up to all kinds of scrutiny.”
History is written by winners, loathed by whiners. Derrick and Team USA face Serbia and Nuggets icon Nikola Jokic at an exhibition in the UAB on Wednesday. Assuming USA Basketball can ship a new passport his way over the next few days, Richard and wife, Colleen, plan to be on hand in Lille, France, on July 28, when the Stars & Stripes begin group play, also against Jokic and the Serbs.
“It’s pretty exciting that a kid who started at Division II, rose up through the ranks,” Richard said. “He’s worked hard for each and every step that he’s gotten, which is pretty impressive, to keep improving and to keep getting better, in addition to helping his teams keep doing well. That’s something to be proud of.”
Dang straight. While Billups remains the standard here, forever the bar, it’s Derrick White who’ll bring Parker to Paris, quietly crafting a masterpiece of his own. One stroke at a time.
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