Maged el-Malecki’s Boston Dental helped fix Celtics player Derrick White’s teeth after an injury during the NBA championship game.

Boston Sports

When Celtics Star Derrick White Banged Up His Smile in the NBA Finals, This BU Alum’s Dental Office Fixed Him Up

Maged el-Malecki (SDM’02) heads a thriving Boston-area practice

When Derrick White’s face smashed into the parquet floor at TD Garden while chasing a loose ball in the second quarter of game five of the NBA finals, Celtics fan Maged el-Malecki knew immediately that it wasn’t good. He was proven right when White got up slightly bloodied and with more than one damaged upper tooth front and center.

“We knew it was not going to be an easy situation,” says el-Malecki (SDM’02), founder and dental director of Boston Dental, who watched “that beautiful game” with his wife at 3 am at a family home in Dubai. “We knew the damage is going to be there.”

Even after having a 7-foot, 230-pound opponent land on his head, White kept playing, contributing to the Celtics’ eventual 106-88 win over the Dallas Mavericks that secured their 18th championship banner. And el-Malecki, an alum of the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, started preparing his office right away for the high-profile patient, trying to guess the situation from photos sent by White’s team while waiting for him to come in.

Treating White’s very public injury was a sign of how the practice has grown since el-Malecki closed his Arlington practice and bought Boston Dental in 2009. It was just one small office in Downtown Crossing at the time, and he opened a second, larger office near City Hall Plaza six years ago. The Seaport office, which opened two years ago on the ground floor of a mixed-use tower at 22 Boston Wharf Road, takes it up another notch, with high ceilings, marble walls, and the discreet hush of a high-end jewelry store.

In the days after winning the championship, White joined most of his teammates for a celebratory trip to Miami. But his team and the Boston Dental crew continued to plan. He needed his smile fixed in time for Boston’s June 21 duck boat parade, after all, and there was also a Sam Adams Beer commercial to shoot.

“We [were] able to get things beautiful again for him, knowing the parade [was] on Friday,” el-Malecki says. “We[knew] he [was] going to be interviewed on TV a lot and be smiling to all Bostonians in the parade, so there was a little bit of time crunch and a little bit of pressure.”

It was also a painful injury—not to mention gruesome to watch for fans. “I don’t know how he put up with this and how he made his trip down to Florida and [came] back,” el-Malecki says, “but the guy, God bless him, has high, high pain tolerance.”

White came to Boston Dental’s Seaport office on Thursday, June 20. There was a lot of excitement in the office for his arrival, but they tried to keep it low-key. White was gregarious and humble, el-Malecki says, while holding a basketball the Celtic point guard autographed for his office during his visit. “We [were] able to do something great for him, and he was extremely happy, comfortable, and actually enjoyed being here as well, so that was funny.”

The Celtics player stayed about two hours, as dentist Kelli Smith and oral surgeon David Joey Chang (ENG’02) worked on multiple teeth that were damaged. (Chang, who studied biomedical engineering as a BU undergrad,earned his dental degree from Tufts University; he is currently an assistant professor and director of the Tufts Medical Center predoctoral program in oral and maxillofacial surgery.)

Smith admitted that she fell asleep on game night before seeing White get injured. “But I definitely rewatched the video, probably 100 times,” she says, “just to see, what am I in for? And to make sure that we had everything available that we might need.”

When he came to the office, she says, he didn’t want any special celebrity treatment. “Honestly, to me, it’s like treating any other patient. I see dental trauma a lot. This one just happened to be Derrick White, a much taller patient than I’m used to.”

Boston Dental can accommodate patients taller than White’s 6-foot-4, although “sometimes you see the feet hanging off the chair,” el-Malecky says with a smile.

Smith acknowledges being a little nervous working on a member of the world-champion Celtics: “I knew that his smile was going to be on display for the world to kind of pick apart my work. So that was a little nerve-racking. But honestly, once he sat down, I started working. To me, you know, teeth are what I’m passionate about, and it was just the mouth in front of me.”

Besides Boston Dental’s three offices, last fall el-Malecki started FlossTime, which provides mobile on-site preventive and diagnostic dental services for time-pressed workers at corporate offices throughout the Boston area. He grew up in Syria and Abu Dhabi, and sometimes works in Dubai. He’s a big booster of BU’s Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, which he says has a global reputation and for a time operated a continuing education center in Dubai.

Boston Dental’s website says “dentistry is art,” but the goal is not the kind of flawless look that you’ll see in a picture that’s been photoshopped, he says. “I am somebody who likes nature. If there is a little bit of imperfection in the smile—that’s totally perfect.”

Boston fans, who’d moaned at White’s injury and seen his damaged teeth on live TV after the game, noticed when Smith’s smile was fixed, too. Boston Dental was mentioned on social media and handled a tsunami of local media requests. Smith, Chang, and el-Malecki did local TV interviews and one with ESPN, but say they eventually had to start turning them down and get back to work. Smith and some others in the office did find time to walk over to see the victory parade on Friday, where White’s smile was on display for an estimated million fans.

Boston Dental has other celebrity clients—at least one more Celtic and a couple of Boston Revolution players, coaches, and family members, politicians, and CEOs. Patient confidentiality is key, of course, and they wouldn’t talk more specifically about White’s case. 

But they were proud of the result, even knowing that their work isn’t done. 

“It is a temporary fix and later we will do the permanent one,” el-Malecki says.