According to Steve Kerr and Grant Hill, it is either J Brown or Porzi.
It’s hard to really make a Celtics pecking order out of the Olympics. Tatum and Brown are great players, but their skill set is similar most modern NBA stars. I’m not being anti-Jaylen here. Whether it was Mitchell, Lillard, Maxey, Young, or anyone like that, White is the best fit.
The real variable here is that the US really doesn’t have many real point guards who look to pass first, don’t turn the ball over, shoot efficiently, and play great defense. Surely, you’d think, Jrue Holiday and Derrick White, can’t be the only American players who are elite at these things, but they essentially are, or at least they’re the only ones who are elite. Halliburton is
kinda like them but not at their level. He’s a better pure scorer but trails in everything else. It’s amazing the Celtics just happen to have
both of these guys.
The fact that so many people refer to White and Holiday as “role players” just tells you how far away from classic basketball - and into offensive playmaking - people have gotten. Neither one of these guys are “role players” in any sense of the word. They don’t really create shots off the dribble (nor do they try to)…that’s the only reason they get that label. Pressure defense, running the offense, distributing and protecting the ball, moving around the perimeter for an open shot: that used to be the standard job description for a point guard.