Before Coby White was the lightning-rod scorer propping up an underwhelming Bulls season, or the No. 7 pick in the 2019 draft, or even the starting point guard at storied North Carolina, he was the best high school basketball player in his home state’s history.
Still is, as a matter of fact.
The accolades abound: Leading scorer in North Carolina high school history (3,573 points), North Carolina Mr. Basketball, 2018 McDonald’s All-American Game participant. He averaged 30.4 points, 10.3 rebounds and 9.1 assists per game in his senior season, and all the while played for Chris Paul’s AAU team in the summers.
White cited breaking the scoring record at the 2017 John Wall Holiday Invitational, with 119 points in three games, as one of the first times he saw his deep-rooted passion for basketball as leverageable into a career. His brother, Will White, saw the spark a little earlier.
“He was a sophomore. Freshman year, he was ok. Sophomore year he came back, he was at a national tournament, and they played a team where he ended up scoring the most points in the tournament,” Will said in the most recent episode of the Bulls Talk podcast, which the two brothers appeared in together. “They had a lot of big name players (Miles Bridges) and schools (Oak Hill). He scored the most out of anybody in a single game. He went on to break the North Carolina scoring record for points scored in a single season... That's when I knew he was special.”
All of that amounted to a scholarship to play under Roy Williams at UNC, which Coby still touts as one of the greater honors in his life. In his one and only season at UNC, he started at point guard, averaged 16.1 points and earned himself a top seven selection in the ensuing NBA draft.
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But that opportunity was about more than merely donning the Tar Heel powder blue.
“He wasn't just going to get a scholarship,” Will White continued. “Because from where we're from, youth sports is an avenue to get out. Most people just want to be good enough to get a scholarship.”
Where they’re from is Goldsboro, North Carolina, a town of about 36,000 people in the central eastern part of the state — an hour-and-a-half drive from Chapel Hill. Small town, quiet, but one that bubbles in support for their own, no matter their creed or specialty, to hear the Whites tell it.
“I’m a country boy,” White chides when asked to describe his city — and how he’s adjusted to his new one in Chicago.
“[Goldsboro]’s a good town, positive vibe. Every town has their bad parts and what not but like I said, people support you here,” White continued. “Not only me, but other athletes that went Division I, or went to college for free for sports. Or if someone got a full ride to North Carolina for all academics. We all want to support each other. We all want to see each other succeed.
“There's not much to do other than play basketball, or be doing stuff you're not supposed to be doing (in Goldsboro). So for me, it was basketball. I chose basketball.”
Surely, a growth spurt that saw White standing over six feet tall by his freshman year of high school has something to do with that. The talent and tools have always been there. But perhaps more prevalent in instilling the drive and commitment within White to push the envelope of his basketball capabilities was his relationship with his father, Donald.
Don’t get it twisted: Donald White was quite the ballplayer himself. Tall for his time period (6-foot-3 in the ’60s isn’t shabby), he oscillated between shooting guard and small forward in his time playing. The highest level he reached was Division I, spending his college years right up the road at North Carolina Central in Durham, N.C. In a poignant, must-read Player’s Tribune piece by White further detailing his relationship with his father, White called him “the first person to put a basketball in my hands.”
“Scoring the ball for sure. And the confidence me and him had,” Coby said of the connections between his and his father’s games. “The way he stepped on the court… That's kind of the same mentality I have, when it comes to basketball and in life. I carry myself like him. If you ask my mom, the way I carry myself as a person and on the basketball court is probably just like him.”
That love of sport was grown from years of games of H-O-R-S-E in the driveway, Rocky marathons on the television, and an unverifiable tale of Donald completing an off-the-backboard alley-oop so braggadocious, the referee officiating his game dropped the whistle with which he had planned to signal for a technical foul to the ground in awe.
“I couldn't believe if it was true or not. He couldn't even dunk back then,” Coby said with a laugh. “But then he would have people back him up. And I don't know if they were backing him up just because, or if they were backing him up because it was true.”
But, in cruel and unfair fashion, their bond was cut short — before Coby was that lightning-rod scorer, before he heard his name called by NBA commissioner Adam Silver on June 21, 2019, before he made it to Chapel Hill. On August 15, 2017 the White family lost Donald White to a hard-fought battle with liver cancer. He was 65, too young. And Coby was 17, entering his senior year of high school.
“He meant everything to me. He was somebody I could go to about anything. He was my dad, but he was also kind of a best friend to me,” White said. “There's not a day I don't wake up and wish he was here. I think the hardest day for me was whenever he did pass, he never got to see me play at Carolina. He never got to see me get drafted. He's never going to see me get married. The little things in life, you know, the little things you're not going to be able to see. Stuff like that. He meant a lot. Not only to me but my brother, my mom and my sister. He was a joy to be around.”
That familial support — especially from his mother and siblings — has been a source of strength for White throughout a grieving process that even he admits may never fully conclude. Coby and Will live together in Chicago and are attached at the hip. As soon as Coby was medically cleared to leave the city after the NBA season’s suspension, the two hopped in the car and shot straight back to Goldsboro to be close to their mother, Bonita, a tremendous boon of support. Family over all.
“It was tough at the time because I was nowhere near,” Will said of the challenges of supporting Coby at the time of their father’s tragic passing. “I was three hours away. Fortunately, I moved to Goldsboro, so I got to see him. In college, I saw him play a lot. But just had constant communication with him, it would just be regular talk, not even bringing up the situation, just keeping eyes going on a daily basis.”
As the years passed, outlets for that grief emerged. Still, these are wounds that never totally heal.
“I don't think I'll ever be the same,” Coby said. “Honestly, you learn how to deal with the grieving and you learn how to move past it and you learn how to function without him being here. But like I said, every day you wake up and you think about him being here. You lay in bed and you think about him being here. So music is a big outlet for me. I listen to music a lot.”
Now, White is a possible cornerstone in the Bulls’ rebuild, a microwave scorer steadily improving as a facilitator and defender, with explosiveness you can’t teach. But another of his outlets — basketball — has been stripped away for a while, at least in organized fashion, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
White said he’s been staying in shape through body-weight and resistance-band exercises at home, and that the Bulls have been communicative in distributing workout plans and materials. Still, the NBA freezing operations indefinitely after White’s first NBA start, and amid a torrid stretch that saw him playing the best all-around basketball of his time in Chicago, has to be disappointing.
But the positivity, humility and tireless work ethic that has seen White through so much, and to such heights, again, pervades his every word.
“Stay positive. Pray on, and nothing lasts forever,” White said of his message for those grappling with new realities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “As a community and a unit, we'll get through this and move on, and see what's in store. Just stay positive and keep that mental right.”
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