2017 Orlando Magic Draft Preview: Who is Derrick White?

The Bad

The biggest — and most unfair — knock on White is his age. He is a senior and played just one year at Colorado. And so there is a fair amount of questions about his talent and upside. That is the lot of a senior in a draft that seems to value potential over what a player can do immediately.

There are still plenty of holes in White’s game to worry about.

If he is going to play point guard full time, he is not much of a distributor. Colorado was not the best team in the world, but he posted only 4.4 assists per game. He was not a great playmaker or a great distributor of the basketball. He was a scorer.

White measures out well and had good defensive numbers — a +3.2 defensive box plus-minus. But White is not an elite athlete. He has good length, but he does not display a ton of speed. That will affect him on both offense and defense.

White is not a dominant athlete. He does not stand out on the court very much.

He also sometimes struggles to get to the basket. White can create space with his dribble, but will often pull up for a jumper. He is not the kind of point guard that gets all the way to the basket at will.

White relied on his jumper a lot at Colorado and likely throughout his career because it worked. He did not have to do much more than that. And he could hit it at a fairly good clip. So no worries, right?

This is the NBA. Everyone is going to have his athleticism and some of the players are going to have his length. Is he going to settle for his jumper or try to get to the basket at the NBA level? Can he?

Translation questions are always big questions for rising prospects. White is fairly defined as a player though and so the questions are pretty prescient. There is not a whole lot of room for White to improve.