San Antonio Spurs pick up third year option for Derrick White

The San Antonio Spurs saw enough from Derrick White as a rookie to pick up the third-year option on his current contract.

The San Antonio Spurs made a few crucial decisions on their young players on Thursday as they picked up the fourth-year option on Jakob Poeltl and Dejounte Murray’s rookie contracts.

The Spurs have seen a significantly smaller sample size of Derrick White‘s NBA career, but they showed they believe in his potential by handing him a team option for the third year of his rookie deal.

These types of move are fairly automatic unless a team drafts a major bust high in the first round, which isn’t the case here.

However, San Antonio doesn’t know much about Derrick White based off his performance in NBA games.

More from Air Alamo

• Spurs show remarkable poise against Bulls, unlike many fans
• Devin Vassell is the latest in the Spurs’ collection of silent assassins
• San Antonio Spurs: 5 Players to avoid in any LaMarcus Aldridge deal
• Is Gregg Popovich hiding Luka Samanic as a secret weapon?
• San Antonio Spurs News: More DeRozan trade talk from Chris Haynes

After being selected with the 29th overall pick in the 2017 draft, he only played in 17 games for the Spurs as a rookie last season with 3.2 points and 1.5 rebounds per game in 8.2 minutes. Although he did have a very nice 64.6% true shooting percentage on a low volume of shots.

White spent a majority of his rookie year with the Austin Spurs where he played 28.2 minutes per night in 24 games. He lit up the G League scoring 20.1 points per contest while filling up the stat sheet with 5 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1.3 steals, and 1.1 blocks per game.

White wasn’t able to translate that level of production to the NBA level last season, but the Spurs have one of the best player development programs in the league and they’re confident he will develop into a solid player in the future.

According to Spotrac, White will make a little under $2 million in the third year of his deal in 2019-20.

Want your voice heard? Join the Air Alamo team!

Write for us!

Hopefully we get to see a lot more of White this season and get a better understanding of what type of player he can become in San Antonio.