The Knicks may be on the verge of a real rotation shift in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, with Landry Shamet now in position to finish games and, by the end of the series, perhaps even start them. That is a sharper change than a routine bench tweak. It points to a lineup that could lean more heavily on shooting and spacing as the series opens against San Antonio.
The search interest around Shamet Knicks makes sense because this is not about a fringe minute here or there. The Knicks have been dramatically better in Shamet’s minutes than in Josh Hart’s minutes in both the playoffs and the regular season, and the numbers from the Spurs games sharpen that case. In the three games against San Antonio, New York was plus-3 with Hart on the floor and plus-31 with him off the floor.
That gap matters because the Knicks are trying to solve the same problem every team faces against Victor Wembanyama: how to keep the paint from getting crowded while still creating enough clean looks on the perimeter. Shamet’s shooting would give New York a five-out look with no easy outs for Wembanyama to hover in the lane, and the idea is that spreading the floor more widely could make the entire offense harder to defend. If Wembanyama begins the series on Hart, Karl-Anthony Towns would have Stephon Castle, Devin Vassell or Julian Champagnie on him, depending on the matchup.
The Spurs series already offered a small but revealing sample of how the Knicks have looked with Hart and without him. In the game Hart missed, New York lost by two points in San Antonio and launched 52 3-pointers, a sign of how much the offense opened up when the floor was less cramped. In one Knicks win, Hart played 29:33, went 1 of 6 from 3 and finished with a plus/minus of 0, while the Knicks won his off-court minutes by 25.
That is the friction inside the plan. Hart remains a starter-level piece in many playoff settings, and the Knicks were still plus-3 with him on the floor in those three games against the Spurs. But the team’s stronger numbers when he sat, combined with the cleaner spacing Shamet brings, create a case that is hard to ignore in a long series. If the opening game is any guide, the question is no longer whether Shamet fits; it is how quickly New York is willing to make the fit visible when the pressure rises late.
