Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the Boston Celtics are no exception as their second-round series with the New York Knicks heads to Game 6.
Boston’s worst nightmare came to life when star Jayson Tatum suffered a torn right Achilles tendon at Madison Square Garden in Game 4. The team knew, even before Tatum underwent surgery, that it’d be next-man-up or bust for the rest of the way, and the Celtics emphasized that memo once they returned to TD Garden on Wednesday night.
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Kristaps Porzingis, still ailing with a respiratory illness, made the start in the (shorthanded) do-or-die battle to keep Boston’s season alive. The hope was for Porzingis to contribute some kind of spark — big or small — that justified keeping him on the floor, but Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla quickly discovered it was time to yank the plug. Porzingis scored one point with one rebound across 12 minutes and registered a minus-12 rating, leaving Mazzulla no choice but to sit the 7-foot damaged good in the second half.
“He couldn’t breathe, so he was available if absolutely necessary,” Mazzulla said after Boston’s 127-102 win, per CLNS Media. “So that was just a decision between me and him. He was having difficulties breathing, but he wanted to be out there, and if we absolutely needed him, we would’ve been able to go to him and rely on him.”
So instead of counting on the “Unicorn,” the Celtics deferred to their “Green Kornet” to come off the bench — a sneaky move that ended up being Mazzulla’s best decision made this postseason. Luke Kornet wasn’t just serviceable, he was game-changing and season-saving in an outburst that took everyone by surprise.
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Kornet lit a fire under the Celtics as soon as the team summoned him with the Green Kornet signal in the midst of a 59-59 halftime tie. He scored 10 points, grabbed nine rebounds and blocked seven shots — finishing three shy of setting the team’s franchise playoff record, currently owned by Robert Williams III — in 26 minutes on the floor.
Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns got swatted twice amid Kornet’s career-best block party and finished with 19 points on an inefficient 5-of-11 shooting. It was clear that New York head coach Tom Thibodeau hadn’t accounted for Kornet to channel his inner Robert Parish, but it’s even more clear that Mazzulla has no choice moving forward: the Celtics must start Kornet over Porzingis on Friday night.
It was an already-improbable situation Boston was facing, trailing New York, 3-1, but with a chance to force a Game 7, it’s time for Mazzulla to hurl the kitchen sink at the Knicks, Thibodeau, Spike Lee and Timothée Chalamet.
“It’s obviously a situation that none of us hoped to be in, but I think Joe, throughout the years, has been stressing the message of, ‘You just have to love the situation that you’re in,'” Kornet told reporters in Boston’s locker room on Wednesday night, per CLNS Media. “And you can’t really control that, but you can control how you respond to it. Whatever the situation is that presents itself is the exact situation that we’re meant to be in and that we need. So, I think we need to accept that and just choose how we’re gonna respond. That’s the one thing you can do about it and the one way you can operate in life.”
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Boston can’t bank on 38-year-old Al Horford amid his side battle against Father Time. Mazzulla needs to get creative and dip into the team’s depth to disrupt the Knicks in ways they failed to in the second half of Games 1, 2 and 4. The blueprint is right in front of them. When everyone’s active and engaged, Jaylen Brown can fill the playmaker’s role, Jalen Brunson can find himself in foul trouble and Towns can go from Kat to kitten.
Kornet just might be the secret weapon.
“Luke was huge tonight, defensively and offensively,” Brown told reporters after Game 5, per CLNS Media. “He was stellar, and that’s the type of performance we need in the playoffs. Defensively, getting stops, making plays, big finishes. He got that backwards lob. Luke was great tonight.”
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Just when everything seemed bleak for the Celtics, their luck might not run out after all.