From Wichita State to NBA Finals, Landry Shamet finds his moment
Landry Shamet learned long ago that the NBA does not always hand out clean story arcs.
Sometimes a first-round pick finds a home right away. Sometimes he builds a career the harder way, one contender, one role and one postseason run at a time. Sometimes a player can be in the league for eight seasons, play for six teams, win playoff series almost every spring and still be searching for the place that feels like home.
And sometimes, after all of that, the basketball gods send a former Wichita State guard to the New York Knicks, put him in Madison Square Garden, let him catch fire at the most important time of his professional life and give him a chance to join one of the most exclusive clubs in basketball history.
When the Knicks open Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night against the San Antonio Spurs, Shamet will become the sixth former WSU player to play in the NBA Finals.
For Wichita State, it is not just another alumni note. It is another chapter in a strange, sturdy and almost inexplicable pipeline between the Shockers and the Knicks — a franchise that has employed more former WSU players than any other NBA team.
Dave Stallworth played five seasons for the Knicks spread across 1965-75. Nate Bowman played for New York from 1967-70. Both were part of the Knicks’ 1970 NBA championship team.
Xavier McDaniel played one memorable season in New York in 1991-92. Toure’ Murry followed in 2013-14. Cleanthony Early played for the Knicks from 2014-16. Ron Baker became a Garden favorite from 2016-18.
Now Shamet is the latest Shocker to wear the blue and orange and the latest to find out that basketball in New York does not feel like basketball anywhere else.
“There’s a reason why they call it the mecca of NBA basketball,” Baker said. “I don’t know if there’s anything that can compare to the Garden and their fan base. So to have one of our own from Wichita State in a Knicks uniform about to play in the Finals, that’s a pretty outstanding achievement already. And now Landry has a chance here in the next week and a half to put his stamp on history. I think we’re all rooting for him.”
Shamet’s postseason numbers are modest: he is averaging 5.7 points in 13.5 minutes off the bench for New York.
But the longer the Knicks’ playoff run has gone, the more impossible Shamet has been to ignore.
He has made 21 of 35 3-pointers in the playoffs, a 60% clip. During New York’s 11-game postseason winning streak entering the Finals, Shamet has drilled 20 of 29 3s, a preposterous 68.9%. In the Eastern Conference Finals sweep of Cleveland, he made 11 of 12 from beyond the arc.
“It looks good for Wichita State to have one of our guys in the NBA Finals,” McDaniel said. “You always want to support your fellow alumni. He’s shooting 11 of 12 from the 3-point line, that’s incredible. He just played his way into some money with a new contract.”
The moment that changed Shamet’s place in New York came in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, when the Knicks erased a 22-point deficit against Cleveland in one of the most dramatic comebacks in franchise playoff history.
Shamet did not just participate in the comeback. He authored the kind of Garden moment players remember for the rest of their lives.
He hit the game-tying 3-pointer late in regulation. Then, in overtime, he buried the dagger 3 that sent Madison Square Garden into full eruption and turned him into one of the newest favorites in celebrity row.
For Baker, who knows what it feels like to play in a Knicks uniform with Spike Lee, Ben Stiller, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Morgan and the rest of New York’s most visible fans sitting nearby, that part of the experience is hard to explain unless a player has lived it.
“You see the celebrities and famous people and it just makes you understand the magnitude of playing at Madison Square Garden and what New York has to offer,” Baker said. “It truly is a one-of-a-kind experience.”
Shamet has felt that shift around the city.
“New York fans, they’re the best,” Shamet told reporters this week. “Out in public, the excitement is palpable. Walking my dog, I’m getting stopped left and right. It’s pretty cool.”
That excitement has been decades in the making. The Knicks had not reached the NBA Finals since 1999. For a generation of New York fans, the franchise has been more punchline than powerhouse. The Garden remained famous, but the basketball too often failed to match the stage.
That is why this run has hit differently for Markis McDuffie.
Before McDuffie became a Wichita State star, he was a kid from Paterson, N.J., growing up just a subway ride away from Madison Square Garden. He lived through the lean Knicks years. He knew the hope, the frustration and the pull of a franchise that still mattered even when it was not winning.
Now the Knicks are four wins from a championship and one of the players helping them get there is the first WSU player McDuffie remembers meeting when he arrived on campus as a 17-year-old freshman.
“He’s gone make me cry,” McDuffie recently said on the Roundhouse podcast. “People don’t understand Landry was the first player I met on campus. So every time I watch him out there on the court, I remember that first day I met this guy on campus.”
In 2015, Shamet and McDuffie arrived at Wichita State as two of the highest-rated recruits of the Gregg Marshall era. For seniors Baker and Fred VanVleet, that freshman class represented the next wave of Shocker basketball.
McDuffie and Shamet became roommates. They were young, competitive and hungry, but Shamet’s first season was wiped out by a foot injury. That left him stuck watching, waiting and storing away the frustration that would help shape the player he became.
“The first thing I noticed about Landry was that he moved like a pro,” McDuffie said on the Roundhouse podcast. “He was very professional in everything he does, whether it was school or practice. I’ve seen that firsthand.”
McDuffie laughs now thinking about how different Shamet’s game looked in those early WSU years.
Before Shamet became known almost exclusively as a 3-point marksman, McDuffie remembers a guard with more bounce than people might realize, the kind of player who could get a head of steam and throw down a dunk that made teammates stop and look at each other.
Now Shamet’s job is more specialized and more valuable: space the floor, defend hard, punish rotations and make opponents pay for loading up on Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns and the rest of New York’s stars.
That has been the shape of Shamet’s NBA career. After declaring early from WSU, he was selected by the Philadelphia 76ers with the No. 26 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft. Since then, he has played for Philadelphia, the Los Angeles Clippers, Brooklyn, Phoenix, Washington and New York.
The movement can make a career look unsettled. Shamet’s resume tells a more complete story.
He has played in the playoffs in seven of his eight NBA seasons. He has won nine playoff series. His 46 career playoff wins are the second-most by any player from the 2018 draft class.
NBA teams have kept valuing the same things: his shooting, his spacing, his understanding of how to function on winning teams and, in New York, his growth into a trusted defender off the bench.
“I’m a believer that everything you go through, everything might seem small or big,” Shamet told reporters, “prepares you for where you’re ultimately headed in one way or another, even if it doesn’t line up perfectly, whatever the case may be. Really grateful for all the highs and lows I’ve been through personally. All I know right now is that I’m here.”
Where he is now is a place few Shockers have been.
Stallworth and Bowman helped the Knicks win the 1970 NBA championship. Cliff Levingston played a role on Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls title teams in 1991 and 1992. Antoine Carr reached the Finals with the Utah Jazz in 1997 and 1998, losing both times to those Bulls. Fred VanVleet authored the most memorable Shocker Finals performance in 2019, averaging 14 points in the series and helping the Toronto Raptors win their first championship.
Now Shamet has his chance.
For McDaniel, whose one season with the Knicks came during the Pat Riley era, the Garden remains one of the defining stops of his NBA career. He still remembers sitting in a timeout, Riley in front of the huddle, the crowd around him so loud that the coach’s instructions were swallowed by the building.
“I just remember not even being able to hear Pat Riley talk because the Garden was so loud,” McDaniel said. “I can only imagine how loud it’s going to be for the NBA Finals. Man, that thing gets loud.
“It reminds me of that college atmosphere in the Roundhouse. When Tulsa came to town. Or Illinois State. The Roundhouse would be rocking and you could feel the building moving. That’s how it felt in New York.”
That is the bridge Shamet now walks, from Koch Arena to Madison Square Garden, from one basketball-obsessed building to another.
The scale is different. The lights are brighter. The stakes are enormous.
But the assignment is still familiar.
Be ready. Make shots. Defend. Help a winning team keep winning.
“It’s the type of energy, as an athlete, you just thrive to be in,” Baker said. “Seeing Landry impact games at the highest level, it’s just phenomenal. It’s really special to me because I had a chance to play there and put that uniform on, so it’s just a really cool moment.”
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