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Luke Kornet’s three point contests from the paint have been an NBA spectacle this season. And The Eclipse as he calls it, seems to be working, despite looking like an inflatable tube man. So I went through every single shot he’s defended this season to find these specific ones, and to calculate the percentage. What up everybody, my name is Stefan and this is Heat Check. Let’s get into it. This bizarre defensive technique has a very interesting origin story. The Celtics under Brad Stevens had a second jump rule. Meaning that Stevens wanted his defenders to wait until a shooter was in the air before leaving their feet, to avoid biting on a pump fake. So Brown would wait until the very last second and then leap as high as he could with both hands in the air. Rather than try to reach out toward the shooter, Brown wanted to make them shoot just a little bit higher. So Kornett took note of that and also remembered the way Shane Battier defended Kobe with a hand in his face trying to distract his vision. So he combined these 2 methods to create the ultimate defensive ….. Which as he says “It can look really dumb, but it seems to be pretty effective” But is it really? I wanted to see if the stats back this up. So I watched through every single one of Luke’s defensive possessions. And although it’s a smaller sample size, the results are shocking. According to my tracking numbers, so far this season Kornet used the eclipse on 12 shots from downtown. And only 3 of those went in. As you can see, these are considered wide open shots. There’s literally nobody around. So to shoot 25%, that’s horrific, and it leads me to believe that the Celtics big man is onto something. But the validation of a youtuber is absolutely nothing- especially when compared to the reigning defensive player of the year. His teammate Marcus Smart. Explaining it he said: “I think it catches a lot of people off guard because they are open, and then they see a 7-footer just jump straight up out of nowhere. It’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ So it works and we love it” Not only does he love it, but Marcus actually adopted the Kornet contest and tried it out himself one time. And it worked for him as well so who knows the entire Celtics roster might soon begin to implement this defensive strategy. Their new head coach Joe Mizulla will allow it since he had high praises for Luke “I think that’s something he is good at and watched a lot of film. I think it’s a good way to contest without getting into a closeout. It’s a solid tactic, so it works.” There’s an entire article on the Athletic getting really in depth on Luke and his defense. So I highly recommend that you read it. The link is in the description. Let me know if this is something that you would do to help your team win. That’s it for now, subscribe and talk to you in the next one. Peace out.
