The birth of an iconic moment

Are you not entertained? When any non-believer tells you they don't understand people's crazy fanaticism with sports, show them the last minute of Game 6 of the Miami Heat - Boston Celtics game, 2023. If that doesn’t do it, I don’t know what to tell them. They simply have no heart or soul, or blood pumping through their veins. You need to distance yourself from that person as quickly as possible.

The Celtics were within a split second - the amount of time it takes to sneeze - of seeing their once-promising season come to an end. They blew a 10-point lead with three minutes remaining in the game and found themselves down one with three seconds left. That was after Al Horford, who had a huge momentum-shifting block at the rim only minutes before, committed a bone-headed foul on Jimmy Butler as Butler scrambled in the corner to get a shot off. Butler, who struggled all night, calmly made three free throws. The crowd went crazy in anticipation of the Heat heading to the NBA Finals. The Celtics’ dream of being the first team in NBA history to come back from a three game deficit looked like it was dashed.

When Jayson Tatum couldn’t get freed up at half court to accept an inbound pass from Derrick White, Marcus Smart broke off his screen and ran to White. White made the short pass to Smart at the three-point line, and as everyone focused on the ball and Marcus Smart rising up to take what appeared to be the final do-or-die shot, no one noticed White circling and then darting to the rim.

Smart’s shot looked true while in the air, but rattled in and out. Season over. Another failed season. Better luck next year.

If you would have bowed your head in disappointment at the Smart shot missing, you could be forgiven for not seeing the ball going off the backboard and through the hoop a split second later. Yeah, but how many times do you see that - a last second shot misses and a player, meaninglessly and desperately, puts the ball in after the buzzer?

The TV announcers easily dismissed the made basket. The Heat were on their way to the Finals. The home crowd was going nuts. But one player was waving his arms in the air saying, “Hold everything. Wait a minute. Not so fast.”

That player was Derrick White and he was the one who had followed-up Smart’s miss and put it back in the hoop.

Could it be that he got the shot off before the backboard lit up red to signify time had expired. It didn’t seem possible. There was only three seconds left when he in-bounded the ball to Smart. Surely, by the time Smart caught the ball, turned and shot his high-arcing shot, and saw the ball rattle around the rim and back into the air, that had to be more than three seconds. It felt like an eternity watching it in real time.

But there it was on replay. The ball left White’s fingertips with 0.1 seconds on the clock. The backboard was not lit up yet. Were Celtics’ fans dreaming? Let me see another replay. And another. Every time they showed a replay, it showed the same thing. The shot was good. The Celtics won. The Heat were not going to the Finals just yet. There would be a Game 7.

And the hero wasn’t Tatum, or Jaylen Brown, or Marcus Smart. That’s what makes moments like these extra special - when a relatively obscure player engraves his name in history and sports lore. We saw it with pinch-runner Dave Roberts when he stole second base in a pivotal moment in the 2004 playoffs against the Yankees (which the Red Sox came back from an 0-3 deficit in the series, by the way).

We saw it in the 2015 Super Bowl, when undrafted cornerback Malcolm Butler hurried onto the field at the last moment and intercepted an ill-advised pass by Russell Wilson at the goal line to secure a Patriots’ Super Bowl victory.

And now we have Derrick White.

The Celtics still need to win Game 7, and win in the Finals, for White’s heroics to become truly iconic. Otherwise, it becomes just another cool moment in Boston sports. But if it is to become ranked up there with "Havlicek stole the ball,” or “Stolen by Bird!,” the Celtics will need to finish the job and win it all.