Lowe -- The Boston Celtics Derrick White and the "small" trades that turn good teams into NBA champions - ESPN

EARLY IN DERRICK WHITE'S second season — but really his first, given he spent his rookie year in the G League — the San Antonio Spurs threw him into the fire as a starter.

In one of White's first starts, on Nov. 15, 2018, against the LA Clippers, he encountered the full Patrick Beverley experience: full-court pressure, unrelenting physicality, roaring trash talk. White struggled badly. The next day, he found a note from assistant coach Chip Engelland in his locker with the date of that game and a message: This is the best thing that has happened to you. It's going to make you better. You'll be different from this day on.

(Some within the Spurs also remember a Fathead of Beverley being placed in White's locker — some gentle ribbing — but White does not recall that.)

White kept the note up until the Spurs traded him to the Boston Celtics four-plus years later, he said. «It was humbling,» White told ESPN after Boston's comeback win over the Indiana Pacers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. «This is the NBA. Everyone has a moment like that. I just knew I was going to keep working.»

White emerged in San Antonio as a reliable starter, an important developmental success story for a team trapped in purgatory after trading Kawhi Leonard.

The decision to trade White, then 27, ahead of the 2022 trade deadline was not an easy one for the Spurs, sources said — even as higher-ups recognized the need to rebuild. White was beloved — selfless, good at pretty much everything and willing to work hard on his weak spots. Some within the team argued that he was the kind of player the Spurs should want as an organizational exemplar for whatever young guys the coming rebuild would net.

The Spurs did not let go easily when Boston and