Luke Kornet played 61 seconds in Game 7. He left as the most important Spur on the floor.
The 30-year-old backup center checked in at the 6:48 mark of the fourth quarter Saturday night to give Victor Wembanyama a quick blow with San Antonio clinging to a 97-91 lead. Almost immediately, Isaiah Hartenstein picked off a pass and took off in transition with a full head of steam toward the Oklahoma City basket. The Paycom Center crowd, sensing a momentum-shifting and-one, came to its feet.
Then Kornet went into another gear.
The seven-foot-two reserve ran down Hartenstein from behind and rejected the layup attempt with a chasedown block that immediately killed OKC’s run and re-centered the Spurs. San Antonio closed the game on a 14-12 run from there and walked off with a 111-103 win and an NBA Finals berth.
The block was so loud the entire basketball internet lost composure at the same time. The NBA’s own social account called it “the type of plays you need to win a Game 7.” Spurs Culture called it “the greatest block in Spurs history,” which is debatable but not by much. Brad Rowland of FanSided summed it up cleanest: “Luke Kornet might’ve made the biggest play of the NBA season to date.”
This is the part where you remember Kornet is the guy you might have forgotten was even on the Spurs roster. San Antonio signed him last summer to a modest deal to give Wembanyama a real backup. He averaged 5.4 points and 3.8 rebounds in 14.3 minutes per game during the regular season. He is one of the league’s better screen-setters and one of its quieter rim-protectors. He is not on All-Star ballots. He is on title teams.
That is the value of role players in a playoff series, and that is the value of a coaching staff that trusts its rotation enough to keep deploying them. Gregg Popovich could have just rolled with Wembanyama 47 minutes. He did not. He trusted Kornet for one shift, and that one shift changed the season.
Kornet subbed back out at the 5:49 mark. The block was the only stat that mattered. The Spurs led 99-91 after the play. The Thunder never got the lead back to a single possession.
Hartenstein was crushed in the postgame, telling reporters he should have just dunked it harder. He is not wrong. But Kornet had to be perfect on the chase and he was perfect on the chase. Replay shows him gaining ground on Hartenstein step for step, timing the jump, and getting all ball with the angle. It was a textbook chasedown executed by a guy who almost never gets the chance to execute one.
The Spurs needed everything they had to put the Thunder away. They got a Western Conference Finals MVP performance from Wembanyama. They got grit from Stephon Castle and poise from rookie Dylan Harper. They also got 61 seconds of immortality from Luke Kornet.
San Antonio is going to the NBA Finals because the role players showed up when the lights were brightest. Bookmark this block. You are going to see it again every time Game 7 highlights run for the next decade.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
