The Boston Celtics know just how important a piece Derrick White is to their ambitions of winning the franchise's 18th championship. After all, White is a terrific point-of-attack defender, a willing mover of the basketball, and a heady cutter. But at the end of the day, White just does what the Celtics need to win. Despite being the Celtics' fifth option, White proved on Friday night that he can pop off to spur his team to victory.

On Friday night, in a heated rematch of the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals against the Miami Heat, it was White, the hero of Game 6, who stole the show. White put up a game-high 28 points on 9-15 shooting from the field (with five triples), being a dangerous offensive weapon for when the Heat would focus their efforts on Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. And 14 of those 28 points came in the fourth quarter, doing his damage in the clutch and being just the second player ever in franchise history to put up 25+ points with 5+ threes in a home opener, per ESPN Stats & Info.

And Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla acknowledged the epic masterclass they got from Derrick White, dropping some huge praise for the versatile combo guard.

“The plays he made tonight were like sick. They were sick plays,” Mazzulla said in his postgame presser, per Jared Weiss of The Athletic.

Derrick White has a penchant for being at the right place at the right time, filling in the gaps the Celtics have on the night and helping them to victory even if their other players are struggling. Jayson Tatum, in particular, did not have a very good shooting night, going 9-22 for 22 points against the Heat. But White was there, leading the Celtics to a 32-point fourth quarter in which they outscored the Heat by nine.

These kinds of scoring pop-offs may come few and far between for White from this point forward since the Celtics have plenty of mouths to feed. But defenses can never count White off, especially when he's capable of making “sick plays” without having to put the ball through the hoop necessarily.