After sleepwalking through the holiday season and much of January, the Celtics have gotten hot. They’re 6-1 in their last seven games and 9-3 in their last 12, reminding the NBA that when they play to their championship potential, they’re nearly unbeatable.
What sparked this turnaround, which came after Boston posted a middling 11-10 record from Dec. 19 to Jan. 27? According to one veteran player, Boston has Luke Kornet to thank.
Al Horford gave his fellow big man an unprompted shoutout after the Celtics routed the Miami Heat 103-85 on Monday night, saying Kornet’s contributions have been vital to the team’s recent success.
“I feel like we’re playing really good basketball, and we’re continuing to get better,” Horford told reporters in Miami. “I think we’re continuing to take steps towards that. I feel like Luke Kornet has been key for us. When you talk about that identity and the way we want to play, he’s protecting the rim at an amazing level, and defensively, he’s giving us a lot of stability. And then from there, I feel like we’re all kind of filling in. But I’ve just been impressed how he’s been able to do that, and because of that, I feel like all of us are kind of stepping it up a little more, and we’re getting close to that level that we need to be.”
Kornet was quiet against the Heat (zero points, three rebounds, two assists, two steals in 22 minutes) but excellent two nights earlier in a blowout win over the New York Knicks.
Elevated to the starting lineup after center Kristaps Porzingis fell ill shortly before tipoff, the affable 7-footer scored 14 points on perfect 7-for-7 shooting; grabbed 12 rebounds, including five offensive boards; and blocked three shots. Kornet, Horford and Neemias Queta helped hold All-Star Knicks big man Karl-Anthony Towns to his worst scoring output of the season (nine points on 3-of-8 shooting), and the Celtics won by 27.
And that wasn’t the only standout performance from Kornet, who’s quietly been a difference-maker for Boston of late.
On Jan. 18, with Porzingis and Horford both resting on the second night of a back-to-back, Kornet tallied 17 points, seven rebounds (six offensive), four steals and two blocks in an overtime loss to Atlanta. Over the last 13 games, beginning with that Hawks matchup, he ranks second on the team in blocked shots behind Porzingis, tied for second in steals (one behind co-leaders Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown) and fourth in plus/minus. He grabbed more than twice as many offensive rebounds as any teammate during that span (36; Brown was second with 17), led the team with a 70.9% field-goal percentage and had the best free-throw percentage (86.7%) of any Celtic with at least 10 foul shots.
Kornet is an advanced stats darling, too, spending most of the season ranked near the top of the NBA in net rating. As of Tuesday, he was fourth among qualifiers, trailing only Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins. Kornet also ranks ninth in defensive rating, fifth in both effective field-goal percentage and true shooting percentage, and eighth in offensive rebounding percentage, and he’s the only non-guard to crack the top 10 in assist-to-turnover ratio (eighth).
Player Impact Estimate (PIE) aims to measure a player’s performance at both ends of the court in one all-encompassing stat. Only Tatum and Porzingis have scored higher in that metric than Kornet through the Celtics’ first 54 games.
After briefly falling behind Queta in Boston’s frontcourt rotation early in the season, Kornet now is firmly entrenched as an every-night contributor, on pace to set a new career high in minutes per game (17.3). He’ll be an important piece in the back half of the season as the Celtics look to keep the 38-year-old Horford and fragile Porzingis fit for the playoffs.
Payton Pritchard turned down a chance to showcase his 3-point prowess at NBA All-Star weekend.
The Celtics guard said he was approached about competing in this Saturday’s 3-Point Contest but chose to spend his weekend away from the court.
“They had communicated to be a little bit about it,” Pritchard told reporters in Miami, “but I just didn’t think it was the time this year.”
New York’s Jalen Brunson, Detroit’s Cade Cunningham, Cleveland’s Darius Garland, Miami’s Tyler Herro, Golden State’s Buddy Hield, Brooklyn’s Cameron Johnson, Milwaukee’s Damian Lillard and the Los Angeles Clippers’ Norman Powell were selected to participate.
Pritchard’s plan for the All-Star break?
“I mean, I love playing basketball. I love it,” he told reporters. “But I do like a break occasionally. I’m going to be nice on the beach, chillin’, being with friends and family. I take it in. I’m a normal kid at the end of the day. … I go and relax, do normal things, have good meals, maybe have a drink.”
Pritchard has been one of the NBA’s most prolific perimeter shooters this season, ranking eighth in the league with 168 made threes despite coming off the bench in all 53 of his games. (Two of the players ahead of him are Celtics teammates Tatum and Derrick White.)
Among bench players, Pritchard leads the NBA in scoring by a massive margin (98 points more than second-place Naz Reid as of Tuesday) and also ranks first in plus/minus, second in assists and tied for fifth in steals. He remains the clear favorite for NBA Sixth Man of the Year, even after a quieter start to 2025. The 27-year-old scored fewer than 10 points in more than half of his games in January before delivering back-to-back 20-point efforts last week against the Dallas Mavericks and New York Knicks.
Pritchard scored just five points and went 1-for-8 from 3-point range in Monday’s win over Miami, but he registered 10 rebounds, eight assists and two steals and was a plus-17.
“Everything comes and goes,” he told reporters. “The blessing of our team is we have so much talent, and there’s going to be times where you just don’t see as many shots. As long as we’re winning, that’s all that matters. But I feel like (my) scoring is going to … have peaks, and then there’s going to be times where I’m not scoring as much, but hopefully I’m impacting the game by rebounding and other things. I just try to hang my hat on that. But everybody knows I’m capable of scoring. I know I’m capable of scoring at a high level. So there will be games that’ll call upon me to do that; there will be games where they ask me to take three shots, and that’s OK, too.”
Three Celtics players are scheduled to attend All-Star weekend. Tatum and Brown were voted in as an All-Star starter and reserve, respectively, and third-year point guard JD Davison was selected to participate in the Rising Stars event as part of a team of G League players.