Spurs guard Derrick White, fresh off the best season of his three-year NBA career, has undergone surgery on the dislocated second toe of his left foot, per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link). Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated tweets that White had been dealing with the left toe dislocation since before the NBA’s Orlando restart.
San Antonio traveled to the NBA’s 22-team Orlando restart campus but just barely missed out on qualifying for the play-in game between the eighth and ninth seeds in the West, finishing with a 32-39 record and the No. 11 seed.
White, considered a core part of the Spurs’ future along with backcourt mate Dejounte Murray, will be eligible for an extension of his rookie contract once the 2020/21 league year begins. He averaged 11.3 PPG this season while playing terrific defense, including high marks for block percentage and defensive rebounding percentage. He converted 36.6% of his 3.2 three-point attempts per game.
As ESPN’s Bobby Marks noted in a season review last week, locking in White long-term would be a savvy move for the Spurs as the team continues to rebuild during its first year out of the playoffs since 1997. Marks pegged an extension for White within the range of a four-year, $52MM deal, which would give Spurs team president and head coach Gregg Popovich and GM Brian Wright over $70MM in projected salary cap room for 2021 free agency, when several high-level All-Stars and role players are expected to be available.
The eight-figure contracts of Spurs veterans LaMarcus Aldridge, Rudy Gay and Patty Mills will all come off San Antonio’s books in a year. The jury is out on whether guard DeMar DeRozan, the team’s priciest player, will exercise his $27.7MM player option for the 2020/21 season.
The pic is of Dejounte Murray, not Derrick
This is what happens when the coffee wears off. It’s been remedied!
RC is no longer GM, he is CEO.
Brian Wright has been GM for a year.
Marks threw a number out there, good job, 4/$52, 13 per. That might be team-friendly, but, sure. àAlso said that White was good at drawing shooting fouls, which I would not have guessed.
The Spurs just need to stay patient and they could be a team to watch for in 2021/22. DeRozan, Aldridge, and Gay will be off the books, giving them abundant spending room. They’ll have a solid young core with Walker, Johnson, White, Forbes, Murray, and the 13th pick. They can complement these young players with a superstar in free agency and then pursue veteran supporters to round off the roster