The Whiteboard: How Coby White finished off the Hawks

The dramatic improvement of Coby White was one of the most fun and fascinating developments this season and he kept the train rolling in the Play-In Tournament. Sharing the court with DeMar DeRozan, Trae Young and Dejounte Murray, he was the most effective player in the game, by far.

White finished with 42 points, 9 assists, 6 rebounds and 2 steals, shooting 15-of-21 from the floor and getting himself to the free-throw line 10 times. He is the reason the Bulls are advancing to play the Miami Heat with a chance to secure the No. 8 seed, and the Atlanta Hawks are heading into the summer considering trading Trae Young.

While the Hawks were without two of their best frontcourt defenders — Onyeka Okongwu and Jalen Johnson — they had plenty of good options to throw at White. DeAndre Hunter and Dejounte Murray are both strong perimeter defenders and White really struggled in three games against the Hawks this season — shooting 38.3 percent from the field and 15.8 percent from beyond the arc — in part because of Murray's swarming defense.

Murray did a decent job in this game but not nearly good enough and White exploded by taking advantage of any opportunity when Murray wasn't in front of him.

Coby White feasted on Trae Young and Bogdan Bogdanovic

The Hawks used Dejounte Murray as White's primary defender, mostly trying to hide Trae Young and Alex Caruso. But White was relentless attacking Young any time he got an opportunity because of a switch, cross-matching in transition or just because of certain lineups.

Young's defense is uninspired at best and he certainly wasn't at his best in this game. But White's size, aggressiveness and strength often allowed him to blow right through Young. It's pretty telling that in the clip below, Ayo Dosunmu is wide open in the corner and he's still pointing at White, telling DeRozan to pass the ball there so he can attack Young.

The NBA's matchup statistics should be taken with a grain of salt as an algorithm determines how to assign defensive responsibility based on how long each defender is closest to each offensive player on a given possession. But they show a pretty dramatic difference in how often White attacked Young as opposed to Murray, and how effective he was in each case.

White wasn't the only player for the Bulls who put up big numbers — DeRozan added 22 points and 9 assists; Ayo Dosunmu added 19; Nikola Vucevic had a double-double with 24 and 12. But White was the engine and the way he targeted Young and Bogdanovic helped turn a good game into a great one.

White was also pretty aggressive and extremely successful in attacking Bogdan Bogdanovic — shooting 4-of-4 and drawing a shooting foul in just nine possessions with Bogey as his primary defender.

Subscribe to The Whiteboard, FanSided's daily email newsletter on everything basketball. If you like The Whiteboard, share it with someone you love! If you don't like The Whiteboard, share it with someone you loathe!

Jontay Porter gets the Pete Rose treatment

Yesterday, the NBA announced the results of their investigation into gambling allegations against the Raptors' Jontay Porter and handed down a lifetime ban. If that feels like a dramatic end to this saga, you must not have read the fine details.

The initial allegations were that Porter bet on the under for props involving his own stats, only to leave those games with previously unreported injuries. As reported by ESPN, Porter was also found to have "disclosed confidential information to bettors, limited his participation in at least one game while he was with Raptors, and bet on NBA games while playing in the G League.

In one case, while playing with the Raptors, he also bet on his own team to lose as part of a three-team parlay. The league's report doesn't include details on whether or not he played in that game, only that the bet lost.

Legal sports gambling is a relatively new entity and the NBA is obviously attempting to draw an extremely clear line to discourage this kind of behavior in the future, which could disrupt an enormous new revenue stream.

READ MORE:

• Stupid games, stupid prizes: NBA hands down Jontay Porter punishment by Sravan Gannavarapu, for FanSided
• NBA bans Raptors' Jontay Porter for gambling violations by David Purdum, for ESPN
• Sources: Jontay Porter Operated Betting Account, Wagered Millions Over Multiple Years, Now Banned from NBA by Chase Howell, for Action Network

QUICK HITTER: Tyler Herro and Jimmy Butler couldn't open shots

The Heat dropped a tight game against the 76ers, 105-104, and will now need to beat the Hawks to make it to the playoffs. They'll have to do it without Jimmy Butler but, frankly, he and Tyler Herro weren't much against the 76ers.

The Heat's two primary offensive weapons were 14-of-45 (31.1 percent) from the field and 6-of-20 (30 percent) from beyond the arc. But what really destroyed Miami was how many of those were really good looks.

According to the NBA's player-tracking statistics, Herro and Butler were a combined 4-of-18 on jumpers classified as open (no defender within four feet) or wide open (no defender within six feet). In a game decided by one point, all those wide-open misses were just too much for Miami to overcome.

Recommended Reading:

1. The Basketball Gods hate Zion Williamson: "But something has always stopped Zion Williamson from actualizing the dreams he conjures. He drew Barack Obama and 4.3 million other viewers—then the most in ESPN’s history of weeknight college basketball programming—to a rivalry clash as old as the game, only for his shoe to explode 30 seconds in, injuring his knee and Nike’s stock price in the process. It was an omen of what was to come and the risk of attaching one’s hopes to his trajectory." The Zion Williamson Conundrum Looms Once Again

2. Hard to do two timelines when your Coach doesn't time travel: "While each of the Warriors’ young players, outside of Moody, found themselves starting critical games, it was only after an older player flopped or was injured. Kerr has never trusted young players, but this was the season he needed to. It would have kept his veterans fresh, and more importantly, it would have helped them win games." 4 Warriors mistakes that would get any coach besides Steve Kerr fired

3. 88-inches of self-reflection: “I feel way more comfortable when I have some momentum. Sometimes when I just catch and shoot with no dribble, I just feel like my arms are so low. My hands are so big, I feel like I’m stuck in a box. You know how Wilt Chamberlain was very bad at free throws? He was so good at hook shots and running finger rolls because he had momentum. … I feel kind of the same because there’s so much going on with such a small basketball, and so I feel way more comfortable when I can flow into my shot by being in movement already.” The Victor Wembanyama Interview: Wemby Goes Deep on His Historic Rookie Season