Coby White Returns Home to North Carolina, Grounded in Goldsboro Roots

GOLDSBORO, N.C. — In Goldsboro, North Carolina, community is everything. For Coby White, it is where everything began.

“Just growing up there, it’s a small community, a very, very small town,” White said. “Not many people even know where it is. I have to explain to people a lot. They ask where I’m from, they always think I’m from Greensboro. I’m like, no, I’m from Goldsboro.”

The city is tight-knit and familiar, but not without its challenges.

“It’s one of the poorest cities in North Carolina, a lot of violence, stuff like any other small rural area,” White said. “Seeing my peers and the stuff that they had to go through whatever it may be at home life, environments they grew up in, poverty, whatever it may be.”

His sister, Tia White, says the reality of Goldsboro is complex.

“I will never paint Goldsboro as if it’s just horrific,” she said. “Now, you can look at all the data: it’s one of the poorest as far as median income in the United States of America. That’s just the reality of it.”

Growing up in a place like Goldsboro can shape perspective, she said.

“If you are from a city or a town like Goldsboro, you have unintentional, unenforced blinders because the world as you see it is very narrow,” she said.

Still, it is where Coby and his siblings Tia and their brother, Will, were raised by their mother, Bonita, and their late father, Donald, whose influence remains central to their lives.

“My dad was a character,” Tia White said. “He was from a time where segregation was still prevalent. He was from a time that everybody wasn’t educated, and he was from a time that hard work meant everything.”

She said their father instilled values that went beyond discipline.

“He really forced you to think about being intentional and how you could always get more out of life and always give to others in life,” she said.

Donald White also passed down a love for basketball, having played at North Carolina Central University.

“He really gave Coby the ball first, put it in his hands, would be outside shooting hoops with him,” Tia White said. “He was the one who told him basketball could be a thing.”

In a family where nearly everyone played, Coby stood out. 

“If Coby had a great game, he told him he had a great game. If Coby stunk it up one night, he told him he stunk it up,” she said. “He was your biggest fan and your harshest critic at the same time.”

Now, roughly 200 miles from Goldsboro, White is back in the state that shaped him after being traded from the Chicago Bulls to the Charlotte Hornets in February.

It is a return that brings his journey full circle. Coby returns to North Carolina, about 200 miles from the local YMCA he said he spent most of his time, and about 200 miles from his high school, Greenfield School, where he still holds the all-time high school scoring record in North Carolina’s history. Now he is back: as a Charlotte Hornet.

“I couldn’t have dreamed of this growing up,” White said. “If you would have asked the 15, 16-year-old me would I be able to play in the NBA, play in my home state, be as successful as I am and have the opportunity to change lives, I would have looked at you crazy.”

As he builds his career, his family says his foundation has never changed.

“I sit back and I laugh and I say, we’re our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” Tia White said. “If my grandparents could see all that we’ve accomplished, I know they’d be proud. If my dad could be here today and see all that we’ve accomplished, he would be proud. It sometimes makes me speechless. I know it makes Coby speechless. He’s one of the most humble, hardworking people I know.”