Luke Kornet received extra minutes in San Antonio on Saturday with Al Horford resting, the Celtics’ third center who’s emerged as more of a luxury this season by growing stronger and pairing his reads and screening ability with more forceful offensive rebounding. His first play late in the first quarter came setting up Jayson Tatum for a pull-up three, securing the board and firing a pass to Jrue Holiday for a three that pushed the Celtics ahead, 30-19, in their eventual 121-111 win.
Kornet raced to 11 points, 13 rebounds and three assists in three quarters, playing 22 minutes over that stretch where the Celtics built a 13-point edge. Kornet’s bench group won their minutes by 22 — without Payton Pritchard, who missed the game with hip soreness. The performance begged the question of how much Kornet, who’s playing nearly 20 minutes per night this season, could appear in the playoffs one year after logging 10.2 MPG before his role disappeared in the eastern and NBA Finals.
That statistical bump for Kornet, never a stat sheet player, continued to capture the attention of fans and even some outsiders into his eighth NBA season and fifth year in the Boston organization. He entered Saturday averaging 5.4 points, 5.1 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 1.0 block per game on 67.4% shooting. Slightly more shots, free throw attempts and his larger rebounding leap stand out, but his focus remains the same on the court and also enhanced slightly into this year. His basketball life depends on free Tatum with screens. It’s a full time job.
Lineups with Tatum and Kornet now outscore Celtics opponents by 15.0 points per 100 possessions with a whopping 120.8 offensive rating in line with Boston’s all-time offense from one year ago. On Saturday, which took their screening combination that recently emerged among the NBA’s best, off the ball. More often lately, the Celtics are throwing Tatum passes around screens to get into his drive-and-kick game with defenders abandoning perimeter shooters and Kornet’s rolls toward the rim to stop Tatum’s attack. It’s no surprise his assists, eight more coming in San Antonio, ballooned to 6.9 per game over the past two months. Tatum would owe Kornet some money if a sizable pay day didn’t inevitably loom for the Celtics big this summer. If he wants it.
Kornet returned to Boston, as we’ve noted here several times, despite receiving multiple offers last offseason that included a $7-million deal with the Jazz. He returned to the Celtics for the league minimum, secured by the no-trade clause that decision carries, knowledge of his role and familiarity with teammates who returned almost in full. Boston would benefit from a similar choice by the veteran this summer, they almost certainly can’t offer him a dime over the minimum without some maneuvering elsewhere while Al Horford also hits free agency. But as Horford’s continued defensive importance became apparent again in recent weeks, so has Kornet’s ability to make various double-big combinations work.
The Celtics sat Jaylen Brown for the final three minutes on Saturday after he reached his minutes limit to pair Kristaps Porziņģis and Kornet, a combination locking opponents down to 100.0 points per 100 possessions. About as well as any lineup can perform in today’s NBA. Marrying two seven-footers with passing sense, floor spacing and screening abilities obviously intrigues Joe Mazzulla, and it’s the only way to involve Kornet in playoff lineups if the Celtics decide to do so. Given that Mazzulla heavily emphasizes offensive rebounding to balance their high three-point volume and limit opposing transition offenses, Kornet will play.
Kornet rose to 21st in the league in total offensive rebounds on Saturday with seven in the win, passing Toumani Camara. He also has more than Josh Hart, Nikola Vučević, Isaiah Hartenstein, Evan Mobley and Giannis Antetokounmpo. If he qualified for the leaderboard, only Walker Kessler and Jalen Duren would surpass Kornet’s 14.3 OREB%. And far more impressively, he and Tatum rank among some of the best pick-and-roll combinations in the league.
Luke Kornet has been one of the most impactful bench players this season. Cs are steam rolling opponents when he's on the court (+11.6 Netrtg.)
He's got an undeniable chemistry with Tatum, which shows in their pick & roll numbers — #2 most potent combo behind Murray/Jokic pic.twitter.com/yRgIQCiQvj
— Owen Phillips (@owenlhjphillips) March 21, 2025
That goes back to Kornet’s core skill, and still his most important one. He’s one of the smartest screeners you’ll ever watch, knows exactly where to go and what angle to position himself in to free teammates. And he’s never interested in his own performance. In a counterintuitive way — many ask why he gave up his once highly used three-pointer — Kornet became more impactful, statistically, by focusing less 0n himself.
He also remains a defensive specialist, at taking away the paint, despite some increased versatility and certain matchups won’t work phenomenally for him. The Pacers played him off the floor in the east finals in a way they probably could this year too. The Celtics never called on him for Finals minutes, though a wrist injury that required surgery might’ve factored into that. This year, he’s improved enough to imagine a more sizable role, especially since Boston has used double-big to create wing depth they don’t have, but the Spurs’ speed still hurt his lineups defensively, at times, as they fought within single-digits several times late.
Yet despite Sam Hauser’s increased health and reliability in recent months, along with Baylor Scheierman’s emergence, Kornet has provided night-to-night consistency off the bench that only Payton Pritchard surpassed this season. And there’s merit in sliding Horford to the four more often with his ability to defend the perimeter still strong while his rim protection prowess declined significantly in center minutes to begin the season. That’s where Porziņģis and Kornet emerged to help vault the team to the best rim protection defense since the former’s return.
And for the latter, we’re seeing things beyond his rim protection and screening that we’ve never seen before. Alley-oops on a regular basis. Dominance on the boards. And when Jeremy Sochan caught a post entry in the second half, Kornet met at the ball and strangled it away from him to force a jump ball.
“Seeking the contact and initiating contact, versus … I was more playing the game, mentally, in terms of the positions of everybody on the floor,” Kornet told reporters in San Antonio. “Now, I think, just embracing the one-on-one or body-to-body, physical part of the game has been something that the staff’s done a great job … helping me adapt to that and see that more.”
