Luke Kornet found success by letting go: Inside Spurs big man's evolution away from 3-point specialist

On Dec. 3, when Luke Kornet blocked Franz Wagner’s layup at the buzzer with the Spurs up by two, he did more than secure another win. Kornet raised his arms into the air, pointed upwards, and paid tribute to Vince Carter’s iconic 2000 dunk contest pose.

Teammates made a t-shirt of Kornet in the moment, wearing it proudly. It became the hottest-selling shirt in town, desired by everyone from beat writers to Blake Griffin. 

"It's a lot of weight, being an icon," Kornet told reporters a few days later. "This is how Helen of Troy felt, I think."

Kornet’s unique sense of humor (several players, including Griffin and Jayson Tatum have called him their funniest teammate ever) has made him beloved both in Boston and San Antonio. His coach, Mitch Johnson, told Sporting News that Kornet was the leader of the veterans, noting "his keeping lit light is very joyful and fun to see."

It wasn’t always that way for one of the most delightful fan favorites in the league. In order to carve an NBA role, he had to find rock bottom and change everything that he thought he was as a basketball player. 

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Kornet was an intriguing fringe NBA prospect after four years at Vanderbilt. His mobility was always going to be a limiting factor, but he blocked a ton of shots and set an NCAA record for 3’s made by a seven-footer. There were outlines of Brook Lopez, who he wanted to emulate. 

"One of my goals at the start of my career was to be the best shooting five in the NBA," Kornet told Sporting News. 

After going undrafted, the Knicks took a chance on him, signing him to a two-way deal. He earned spot minutes for the team and thrived, hitting 38 percent of his looks from downtown. 

The Bulls took notice and poached Kornet from New York, offering him a guaranteed two-year contract. Coach Jim Boylen had big plans for him. He infamously noted that Kornet reminded him of Robert Horry, the stretch forward whom he had coached as an assistant in Houston. 

Chicagoans scoffed at that comparison. Kornet was averaging 6.0 points per game and shooting 28.7 percent from 3 by the end of his first year. It wasn’t totally crazy though based on what could have been. 

"Obviously Robert Horry is a great player, but that is what my style was sort of like," Kornet said. "That was the time when I was really hitting the bottom so that was a very difficult part of it."

"I was feeling like I was failing."

Kornet’s once-reliable 3-pointer had totally evaporated right as he had signed that multi-year deal with the Bulls. His issues started with an undiagnosed broken nose with the Knicks that he eventually had to have surgery on. The injury screwed up his breathing. Ankle injuries and various other ailments continued to mess with his form. 

"Honestly I’m not really sure what it is but my movements and body changed where my shooting and touch are different. I couldn’t be consistent and have the same motion pattern," Kornet explained. 

Kornet’s two-year stint with the Bulls ended disastrously. He connected on just 28 percent of his 3’s and looked out of place in their aggressive blitz-heavy offense that prioritized footspeed from their big men. 

"We wanted to create a lot of turnovers. Honestly, I don’t think I fit that very well at the time. That was hard, trying to do your best at that."

By the middle of his second year in Chicago, he was traded as salary filler to the Celtics for big man Daniel Theis. He barely played, subsequently bouncing around several different teams. Eventually, he landed on the Celtics’ G-League affiliate in Maine. His NBA career was hanging on by a thread, and he knew that the vision of being the next Brook Lopez was going nowhere. 

"I was unhealthily serious and not really myself with it in terms of also feeling pressure and expectation from people. When I went to Chicago and then to Maine, this was kind of like a last chance kind of thing. Let’s see if we can make this happen."

The first change that Kornet made was to let more of his good-natured personality shine. 

"I came with this different approach from before. It was starting at Maine where more of that came out in terms of having more fun. I played with more freedom and peace and joy. A lot of it came from letting go of caring about myself and my career."

Kornet also changed his offensive playstyle. He had to shutter the very skill that defined him, his 3-point shot. In its place, he focused on screening, rolling to the rim, and using his size to finish at the basket. 

"I still wish I could shoot the same way I could," Kornet lamented, "but it’s about helping the team win and doing that. It just happened that way."

The last change in Kornet’s game came from the Celtics staff. They saw Kornet as a good rim protector who was much better-suited to the drop defense that he had played earlier in his career at Vanderbilt and with the Knicks rather than keeping him up on the perimeter as the Bulls had done. They moved Kornet closer to the rim. His blocks per 36 minutes have consistently been in the top 15 of the league ever since. 

The offensive changes are harder to see, but they are there. Kornet has become a master at doing the little things to win games. He boxes out, allowing teammates to get rebounds. He sets some of the best screens in the league, allowing the Spurs to fast-track the development of their promising young guards. And he leads the league in zany bench celebrations that light up the team. 

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The Spurs saw all those things in Boston when they gave Kornet $41 million this summer. The move puzzled some of their fans, who hadn’t watched his influence on a championship Celtics roster and only saw the 6.0 points per game he averaged in his most successful year. 

It didn’t take long to win them over. In years past, the Spurs fell apart when Victor Wembanyama was off the floor. This year with Kornet as a capable fill-in, they’ve gone 9-5 in games that he’s missed. He still doesn’t score much outside of dunks and layups set up by his teammates, but the Spurs are winning thanks to his contributions on and off the floor.

"When I wanted the success and credit for it, it really went bad. I took a lot of it on the negative side and it was really painful. When I went through that, it led me to finding a more detached [approach], taking myself out of it as much as I could."

The new version of Kornet is happy being himself, joking about picking uniform no. 7 because he hopes to be a third of the player that Tim Duncan was.

The dreams of becoming Brook Lopez never did pan out. Becoming Luke Kornet turned out to be an iconic backup plan.

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