Raptors, others reportedly offered massive hauls for Celtics’ Derrick White

It's been a wild summer of cost-cutting for the Boston Celtics.

People in Boston have heard the terms 'second apron' and 'repeater tax penalty' more times this summer than ever before. But it's crazy to think that it would've been an even crazier summer for Brad Stevens & Co. had the Toronto Raptors and others had their say while in pursuit of Derrick White last month.

Because when it came to White, teams were willing to go absolutely crazy, according to the latest reporting on a trade that never came to be.

"The Celtics received plenty of offers from teams for White, one of which involved two first-round picks and a swap, league sources said," Brett Siegel wrote for ClutchPoints this week. "There was also strong interest from the Toronto Raptors. As reported on ClutchPoints, the Raptors put together a package revolving around the ninth pick for White, which Boston declined."

Given some of the other moves we've seen this offseason and last, that kind of return would've been the baseline for any team looking to acquire the 31-year-old White from the Celtics. And the Raptors, for what it's worth, ultimately kept that ninth overall pick and used it on 6-foot-7 forward Collin Murray Boyles (16.8 points and 8.3 rebounds per game for South Carolina last year).

And while White, along with fellow Boston star Jaylen Brown, were repeatedly mentioned as potential trade candidates leading up to the draft, it was clear that the Celtics wanted a king's ransom and then some to even consider moving one of them. Even if this is most likely a 'retool' year in Boston.

"Those two guys are really, really great NBA players, and there hasn’t been anything close to serious about trading them," Celtics vice president of basketball operations Mike Zarren said following the 2025 NBA Draft. "I’m not sure where all this reporting came from, but those guys are key parts of our team, and we’re lucky to have them here."

With the Celtics for the last four seasons, White's Boston resume includes two appearances on the All-Defensive Second Team, and two top-10 finishes as the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year. White has also exploded as a three-point scoring threat (his 9.1 attempts per game finished fifth-most in the NBA last year), and averaged a career-best 16.4 points per game in 2024-25.

Going beyond the on-court impact, White is also incredibly close with Jayson Tatum, which does matter in this league and with the Celtics not looking to completely disrupt what they've built over the last seven years.

"Bill [Chisholm] has been pretty clear from the get go that he wants to make sure that we’re prioritizing basketball assets and the ability to retool this thing at the highest level we can," Stevens said when we heard from him last. "We have most of our first-round picks still other than the ’29 one, we have a lot of second [round picks] so we have flexibility there. We don’t want to take away our chance to use those to become the best that we could be over the next few years just to make a move to help save money.

"I think that has been very clearly stated to me."

Or, in other words, it's going to take a whole lot more than two first-round picks for the Celtics to consider moving off a player they clearly view as a core piece.