With Jaylen Brown unavailable for Saturday‘s game against the Hornets with a lingering injury, there was a vacant spot in the starting lineup. Despite Brown being a wing, C’s coach Joe Mazzulla elected to go with big man Luke Kornet as his final starter in a double big lineup with Al Horford.
It was Kornet‘s second straight start as he’s filled in that spot starter role for when Horford is out, like much of the preseason. And the big man showed Saturday why the team trusts him so much. It’s not just that he scored a season-high 19 points on a perfect 6-for-6 shooting, but Mazzulla points out he does so much more to help the team win. The Celtics improved to 6-1 on the season after the 113-103 win over the Hornets on Saturday, sweeping the back-to-back in Charlotte.
“He‘s great,” Mazzula said, via NBC Sports Boston. “He gets a lot of stuff that goes unnoticed. One of the things they don’t chart is block-outs so someone else gets the rebound. So he does a great job keeping his guy off the glass so someone else can get it. I just thought his physicality vs. his switching allowed us to get some easy looks. Just a great presence around the rim.”
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It wasn‘t just Kornet who excelled Saturday as Payton Pritchard’s 22 points was once again a huge contribution off the bench. As Mazzulla often stresses, if he‘s going to play his reserves on the court, he has all his trust in them. Those bench guys just keep rewarding their coach’s confidence with their solid play on the court.
Kornet has developed into that dependable big the Celtics need — and he fills a crucial role on the team with Kristaps Porzingis sidelined due to surgery rehab. But it‘s not just that: Kornet has been a guy who‘s selfless for the sake of the team. For example, when the Celtics traded for Xavier Tillman at last year‘s deadline, Kornet didn’t bat an eye that there might have been more competition for minutes on the roster.
Kornet has also worked toward his current role. He initially came to the team at the 2021 trade deadline as part of the Daniel Theis three-team deal. While he finished out the year with the C’s, he started the 2021-22 season with the Maine Celtics. He was even briefly on the Cavaliers then Bucks on 10-day contracts that season when COVID-19 disrupted rosters across the league.
So Kornet wasn‘t necessarily a lock for the roster. But after the team tweaked the team at the 2022 trade deadline, he was signed for the rest of the season. Since then, Kornet has steadily gained the coaching staff‘s trust as he’s now a key part of the roster. He‘s raved about his time with the Celtics, which is why he chose to re-sign with the team during the offseason. And now, he’s a big part of the defending champs just like he showed Saturday.
“I think it‘s just what our identity kind of is,” Kornet told NBC Sports Boston’s Kayla Burton postgame. “It‘s all about just winning the game at hand. You don‘t know who it’s going to be, but I feel like everybody who came in contributed, and it’s all just kind of rolling in the same direction to get the win.”
