One of the New York Knicks’ most useful Game 1 adjustments against the Cleveland Cavaliers did not come from a marquee name. It came from Landry Shamet, who spent more time on Donovan Mitchell than any other Knicks player and helped hold Cleveland to just 0.81 points per possession in those matchups.
The move mattered because it was part of a broader defensive reshuffle that changed the shape of the game. New York also put Karl-Anthony Towns on Evan Mobley and moved OG Anunoby to Jarrett Allen, forcing Cleveland to deal with a different look than it expected. The Shamet-on-Mitchell assignment did not draw much attention, but it clearly had an effect.
Mitchell remained Cleveland’s center of gravity, and the Cavaliers will almost certainly look for ways to get him into easier positions in the next game. One path is to use Mobley as the screener rather than Allen, since Mobley’s picks are easier to fight around because he is skinnier. Cleveland was also expected to try to get Mitchell matched up against Jalen Brunson by setting off-ball screens.
That plan is not without limits. If Brunson is guarding Sam Merrill, Dean Wade, Max Strus, Dennis Schroder or others, the success rate on those off-ball screens would not be very high. Shamet, meanwhile, was described as one of the Knicks’ scrappier screen navigators, and he had little trouble getting through screens set by Mitchell or other Cavaliers players.
The challenge for Cleveland is simple: New York has already shown it is willing to bend its defensive matchups to make Mitchell work for clean looks. Caitlin Cooper of Basketball, She Wrote was cited for the idea that the adjustment invites the Cavaliers to use Mobley as the screener, which would be a different test for the Knicks. But Game 1 suggested New York was comfortable making those switches on the fly, even when the player assigned to Mitchell was not the one opponents might have expected.
That is the part the Cavaliers have to solve next. If Shamet continues to be the player who is most often in Mitchell’s path, and if the Knicks keep pairing Towns with Mobley and Anunoby with Allen, Cleveland may need a cleaner answer than more screens and more motion. New York already used its first-game looks to force Mitchell into less efficient possessions. The next step is whether Cleveland can make the Knicks pay for repeating them.
