Landry Shamet has gone from an extra piece to a lineup question as the Knicks open Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs. New York has been dramatically better in his minutes than in Josh Hart’s, and that has put Shamet in the conversation to finish games — and maybe, by the end of the series, start them.
That matters now because the Knicks are chasing their first championship since 1973, and every possession against Victor Wembanyama will be measured through that lens. In a series built around spacing, Shamet’s shooting gives New York a five-out look with no easy place for Wembanyama to linger near the paint, which is exactly the sort of adjustment that can change a playoff series before it settles in.
The numbers behind that shift are hard to ignore. In the three games against the Spurs, the Knicks were plus-3 with Hart on the floor and plus-31 with him off. In the game Hart missed, New York lost by two points in San Antonio. In the game the Knicks won easily, Hart played 29:33, went 1 of 6 from 3 and finished with a plus/minus of 0. The Knicks won Hart’s off-court minutes by 25, a gap that is large enough to make any coach look again at the edges of his rotation.
That is where Shamet enters the picture. The Knicks need to spread out Wembanyama, and adding shooting is one way to make that harder on him. If the Spurs keep Wembanyama near the lane to protect the rim, they risk leaving Hart open on the perimeter; if they chase Hart, they open space elsewhere. Shamet changes that calculus because his minutes have looked cleaner, and more dangerous, than the ones he could replace.
The friction is not that Hart is unusable. It is that the matchup may invite a different kind of answer. Wembanyama is expected to begin the series on Hart, but the Knicks were better when Shamet was on the floor, and that makes the choice less about loyalty than fit. If the series tilts toward shooting and spacing, the Knicks may have to trade a familiar role for a better one.
That is why Shamet is not just part of the rotation conversation anymore. He is a live option to close games in the Finals, and possibly to start them before the series is over. The Knicks can keep talking about continuity, but Game 1 is usually where a team learns whether its best five really are its most obvious five.
Shamet Knicks rotation could shift in Game 1 with Landry Shamet gaining ground
