Landry Shamet has become Mike Brown’s plug-and-play starter. If a wing player is injured or resting, Shamet is the man.
After years of accumulating spot starts as a reserve guard, Shamet said he learned how best to adjust to the bigger role:
Be himself.
“I try to keep things as consistent as possible,” he said. “In the past in my career, if it was a spot start or a stretch of them, I think I made the mistake of trying to change too much. Or think I had to change a lot. Or do something differently. Or be something different. Just because I’m starting the reality is it’s the same basketball game. You can create different reasons as to why it’s different. But for me, and I think the whole goal for anybody, is setting yourself up for success and for me that just looks like keeping things as standard and concise as possible.”
Shamet started for the third straight game Tuesday against the Bucks. He replaced Josh Hart, who was ill Tuesday after missing the previous two games with ankle soreness.
If Hart hadn’t been sick, he would’ve played against the Bucks, according to Mike Brown. His ankle was better. Either way, Brown feels confident in the replacement and agrees with Shamet’s assessment.
“With the way our team is built we don’t need anybody to do anything extraordinary. Just go, like Landry said, be yourself, play hard,” Brown said. “It’s not necessarily always how you start games. It’s how you finish. Landry is phenomenal to have as a starter because he’s a two-way player. He has to be guarded and he plays with pace, a lot of other things that we believe in.”
Shamet entered Tuesday averaging 9.3 points on 43 percent from the field — including 42 percent on treys. His production has made up for a rough start from Mikal Bridges, who was at 33 percent from the field ahead of the Bucks game.
Shamet was also closing over Bridges. He had 52 fourth-quarter minutes over the opening nine games, while Bridges had just 41. The Knicks were outscored by 33 points when Bridges was on the floor in fourth quarters.
Still, Brown most appreciates Shamet’s defense. Based on the team’s tracking data, the coach said Shamet has been the team’s best front-end pick-and-roll defender this season.
Not coincidentally, the Knicks defense took off last season when Shamet returned from his shoulder injury in January.
To that point, Brown experimented with different starters when injuries cropped up. Miles McBride started 15 games. Mohamed Diawara started seven.
But now Shamet is the clear choice.
“Like we’ve always said with this team, that it’s kind of a special attribute of our group that everything can change from night to night, from person to person,” Shamet said. “There might be something required of me differently, tonight versus tomorrow night, might be taking more shots, might be guarding this guy. It might be being a great teammate on the bench and picking up somebody who’s struggling or whatever the case may be. All these roles are constantly evolving and rotating. And it’s all of our jobs collectively to just fill the voids that need filling when needed.”
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