Derrick White follows a basketball into the pantheon

His putback on Saturday will make him a Celtics legend if they complete the comeback on Monday.

It was not the first time the world had lost track of Derrick White.

He was ignored at his suburban Denver high school, the same way that 6-foot 155-pound players normally are. He was lightly pursued by Jeff Culver, who was coaching at Johnson & Wales, known for its cooking curriculum, a team that Utah’s Rick Majerus used to schedule after a week of tough exams. And, yeah, there were cupcakes involved.

Culver then took the job at Colorado-Colorado Springs, on the Division II level, and signed White, who grew five inches, filled out, and suddenly averaged 25 points. But even after he transferred to Colorado and averaged 18 points, he was the next-to-last pick in the first round of the 2019 draft, by San Antonio. 

And, as Jeff Eisenberg of Yahoo Sports noted, he was the only player at the NBA Draft Combine who was still paying off his student loans from UCCS.

It’s all a memory now after the Miami Heat let Derrick White get away, late on a Saturday night.

Now in the Celtics’ rotation, White in-bounded from the sideline with three seconds left, down by one point in the game and 3-2 in the Eastern Conference Finals, after Boston had led by 13 in the second half and 10 with 4:58 on the clock.

Naturally White was looking for Jayson Tatum. The Heat was, too. They used Max Strus to accompany Tatum toward mid-court and deny that pass. White then found Marcus Smart, who had set a pick near the foul line. Smart, trying to finish off a brilliant performance, almost immediately turned and fired for the win. The ball was on course, but popped out of the cylinder.

Strus scrambled back toward the baseline. White spotted up in the corner in case Smart wanted to pass. When it became clear that Smart was shooting, White simply ran down the baseline and toward the hoop, looking to give rebounding support. 

Strus was trying to catch him, but Bam Adebayo was parked in front of the rim, the most logical place for a rebound to land.

Except this one bounced to Smart’s left, and right into White’s pursuing hands. Perhaps it was a metaphor. It certainly was a snapshot. White banked in the rebound, the ball sank just as the backboard light went on, and Boston had won, 104-103, to tie the series which ends, one way or the other, on Monday.

Resolution On Causeway Street. Sounds like something The Boss would compose, but it might become one of the few legendary feats that has escaped the Celtics franchise, or every other team in NBA history. They become the fourth team to take an 0-3 Series deficit to 3-3. No one in that position has finished one off.

“We’ve been to hell and back,” Jaylen Brown said.

Some of us can remember the aftermath of Game 3, when the Celtics let go of the rope in the first half. First-year coach Joe Mazzulla was suddenly a league-wide punchline, and the Celtics were being depicted as a high-salaried AAU team, a familiar trope in Boston.

Now they are 6-0 this season when they face elimination, and they are on the verge of earning their own banner in the most crowded ceiling in sports. But they still had one foot in Hades before White continued his lifelong habit of following the ball.

Boston’s lead came apart because of unnecessary fouling and because its offense lapsed back into long-range target practice. The ball movement that had earned that lead disappeared. 

Mazzulla again limited the minutes of Robert Williams, who played 17 and scored 10 with seven rebounds, and whose defense gummed up the lane. Adebayo shot 4-for-16 for Miami, and Butler shot 5-for-21.

Yet Caleb Martin, now in the starting lineup, put together 21 points and 15 rebounds, and Duncan Robinson scored 13 in 20 minutes even though he’l be haunted by two open 3-point tries that he missed late. The Heat kept visualizing a way. On its last possession, Butler tried to turn the corner on Al Horford, who expertly refused to let him. But when Butler raised up for an unlikely 3-point try, Horford, unaccountably, fouled him.

Butler hit all three foul shots and Miami led. Had it ended that way, this particular group of Celtics would have started to develop identity problems. Instead, they’re back in the same place where they beat Miami in Game 7 of last year’s Eastern finals.

There are so many ways to handicap this one, none of which will be relevant when the ball goes up. Tatum, Brown, Horford and Grant Williams shot 0 for 17 from the 3-point line Saturday. Surely that can’t happen again. But Butler played 47 minutes and Adebayo 46, and you add travel to that, and the ankle that Gabe Vincent dragged around on the way to 41 minutes and 6 for 18 shooting. Surely that’s a burden even for such a beastly competitive franchise. And surely Caleb Martin can’t keep shooting 47 percent from deep.

It’s difficult to win a Series twice. In 2013 San Antonio had a 3-2 lead over Miami and a five-point lead with half a minute left in Game 6. Ray Allen fixed that with a corner three, 5.2 seconds left, after Chris Bosh had profited from Tim Duncan’s strange absence and snagged an offensive rebound. Miami won in overtime and won Game 7 the next night.

In 2016 Oklahoma City led Golden State 3-1, lost the next game and had Game 6 at home. It had an eight-point lead with five minutes to go. But Klay Thompson hit 11 three-pointers, which remains a playoff record, and the Thunder coughed up six turnovers in the final three minutes, three of them courtesy of Russell Westbrook in the last 55 seconds. Golden State won by seven, and won the championship the next night.

Game Six failures are tough to leave behind. Ask the Giants after their bullpen folded in Anaheim 21 years ago. Ask the Rangers after David Freese slugged his way into St. Louis scrapbooks, 12 years ago. 

But then Carlton Fisk hit what should have been a heartbreaking home in Game 6 in 1975, not far from Causeway Street. Except the team the Red Sox were playing was a Machine, no emotions required. Joe Morgan got the base hit — “that darn blooper,” he called it — to win that Series for the Reds.

Three NBA teams have had a chance to go from 0-3 to 3-3 to 4-3. None succeeded but, unlike Boston, all played Game 7 on the road. The most recent was Portland in 2003, which trailed Dallas, 3-0, got a gallant boost from the hobbled Scottie Pippen, and made the Mavericks take a stand at home. Portland led at the half but Dallas won, 107-95, as Nick Van Exel brought 26 points off the bench.

Yes, that’s the same Van Exel who gathered the Lakers outside the locker room right before a Game 4 loss that would finish a sweep and chanted, “One-two-three, Cancun!”

That’s a difficult marker for the NBA to overcome, this image that its teams lack of resolve, especially when you see red badges of courage throughout the NHL playoffs. But even though Boston and Miami have shown us their stretch marks for seven games, they’re displaying the old college try, especially by those who tried multiple colleges.

 “It don’t do no good,” Derrick White said, “to stand in the corner.”