NEW YORK — There is a version of the 2026 NBA Finals in which Josh Hart’s shooting drought is a crisis. There is another version in which Jalen Brunson’s 34-percent field-goal rate through two games becomes the story that consumes everything. Landry Shamet has made sure neither version exists.
The 29-year-old guard is averaging 13 points off the bench in each of New York’s first two wins over the San Antonio Spurs, with the Knicks holding a 2-0 series lead heading back to Madison Square Garden for Game 3 on Monday. Those numbers matter. But the way Shamet is manufacturing them — and what their absence would mean for the architecture of Tom Thibodeau’s roster — is the more revealing story.
Fourteen months ago, Shamet was cut by the Washington Wizards and signed with the Knicks’ G League affiliate in Westchester. He had been a footnote in the Phoenix Suns’ ill-fated Bradley Beal trade, bundled alongside Chris Paul and four first-round pick swaps as salary-dump packaging. His career arc, once promising after being selected 26th overall out of Wichita State in 2018, had narrowed to the vanishing point. There was every reason to think the NBA was done with him.
What happened instead is unfolding in prime time.
The most underappreciated dimension of Shamet’s impact is structural rather than statistical. Hart, who helped seal Game 2 with his defensive energy and rebounding, has shot a combined 11.1 percent from the field in this series. He is 0-for-5 from three. His scoring average through two Finals games — 1.5 points — would be a manageable footnote if it were a role player finding a rhythm. On a starter drawing 30-plus minutes, it is ordinarily a slow bleed. Yet the Knicks have won both games, and the reason is almost arithmetically simple: Shamet’s 13 points in each contest lines up almost exactly with Hart’s season-long average of 12 per game. The offensive production did not disappear. It migrated.
That dynamic liberates Hart to operate in the areas where the Spurs have no answer for him. Through two games he has collected 21 rebounds, 10 assists, five steals and two blocks — a defensive and transitional force who has essentially functioned as a second point guard when Brunson needs rest. That version of Hart is worth far more to the Knicks than a Hart who is pressing on catch-and-shoot threes. Shamet’s reliability is what makes the choice available.
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The bench dimension is equally consequential. San Antonio arrived at these Finals with credible second-unit firepower: Keldon Johnson won Sixth Man of the Year, and Dylan Harper has been one of the most explosive rookie contributors in the postseason since Magic Johnson’s 1980 Lakers debut. The concern entering the series was that the Spurs would use their reserve advantage to offset whatever New York’s starters built. Through two games, that has not happened. Knicks reserves have outscored San Antonio’s bench 55-39. Shamet’s 26 points off the bench is the reason Harper’s 31 hasn’t translated into a Spurs edge — the gap that should exist doesn’t, because one player on New York’s side of the equation is playing at an entirely different level than his preseason projections suggested.
What makes Shamet genuinely difficult to game-plan is the variety of his three-point creation, which the NBA’s own film study has flagged as the primary tactical headache for Gregg Popovich’s defense. He is not a stationary catch-and-shoot threat who can be schemed into a corner. He is shooting off movement, off the dribble, off screens, and in transition — four different release points that require four different defensive reads. San Antonio cannot simply track him to his preferred spot because he does not have one.
The momentum value compounds matters further. In Game 1, with New York trailing by eight in the third quarter, Shamet hit a triple in transition that began the sequence that tied the game at 76 entering the fourth. That is not a shot that shows up prominently in the box score; it does not count extra for the circumstances. But the Knicks scored 12 of the next 16 points after it landed, and the Spurs — who had looked on the verge of stealing home-court advantage in the series — never regained the lead. In Game 2, his three midway through the third extended New York’s lead to 11 at a moment when San Antonio’s crowd was finding its voice again. Shamet extinguished it.
Context matters when evaluating where these shots come from. According to NBA.com, Shamet has shot 60 percent from three-point range across the 2026 playoffs on 35 attempts — the best mark among all 84 players with at least 25 three-point tries. Karl-Anthony Towns, widely regarded as one of the most accurate big men from deep in postseason history, ranks fifth at 49 percent. OG Anunoby, who has been superb for New York, is seventh at 48 percent. Shamet is not a beneficiary of a hot streak or an unguarded corner. He is the most accurate shooter in these playoffs, by a margin that strains reasonable explanation.
The fuller picture of what remains unknown is worth acknowledging. Brunson’s shooting struggles — 19-for-56 over two games, nine total free throw attempts — represent a dormant problem that has not yet cost the Knicks a game. If he continues at 34 percent while Shamet cools off even modestly, the calculus changes in ways that favor San Antonio. Thibodeau has not been asked to manage a Finals in which both his primary creator and his starting wing are simultaneously cold. That test has not arrived yet.
What Shamet is doing, however, is reducing the conditions under which that test becomes catastrophic. The Knicks are structurally sound even when their system is not. That is an unusual quality in a Finals team — and it begins with a player who, not long ago, was wondering whether his NBA career was over.
The Knicks and Spurs play Game 3 on Monday at Madison Square Garden, where Brunson’s 30-point Game 1 performance in San Antonio will be expected to resurface on home ground. Whether that happens or not, Shamet will be on the floor — the insurance policy, still paying out.
