Landry Shamet is still riding the wave from New York’s NBA title run, and he’s not shy about getting into the weeds of what that experience actually felt like. Fresh off the championship and heading into free agency, Shamet sat down with the Old Man and Three podcast and dropped a take on Game 3 of the Finals against the San Antonio Spurs that cuts through the usual athlete platitudes.
He called it an ‘anomaly.’ And he meant it.
The Knicks were hosting an NBA Finals game at Madison Square Garden for the first time since 1999. That alone warps the stakes. But Shamet pointed out something that doesn’t show up in the box score: the weird logistics of it all. Teams in the Finals don’t just roll out of bed and play. They go through TSA screening. They stay in hotels. Their entire routine, the one that got them there, gets scrambled.
‘Everything that was stacking showed that this was a big night,’ Shamet said. ‘Game 3 was such an anomaly. We’re going through TSA screening, we’re staying in a hotel so our home routine is off.’
That’s the part fans don’t always think about. The Finals are supposed to be the ultimate test of skill and will. But Shamet is describing something closer to controlled chaos. A home game without the comfort of home. The kind of mental friction that can throw any player off balance.
He didn’t sugarcoat his own headspace either. ‘I remember my level of anxiety that day,’ Shamet said. ‘I felt the anxiety on the whole city.’
New York lost that game. Spurs walked out of MSG with the win. So the ‘anomaly’ label cuts both ways — it’s an explanation for what happened, but not an excuse. The Knicks bounced back in Game 4 with that iconic 29-point comeback capped by OG Anunoby’s putback. That’s the one fans replay. That’s the one that inspired Grandmaster Flash to write new bars.
Free agency looms for a cult hero
Shamet enters NBA free agency this summer as the kind of player every contender wants: a steady reserve who’s already proven he can handle the weirdest, most pressurized stages. No one’s calling him a star. But in a league where role players get chewed up and spit out, Shamet carved out a real spot in Knicks lore. That doesn’t happen by accident.
His ‘anomaly’ quote is the kind of thing that resonates because it’s honest without being dramatic. He didn’t blame the loss on the hotel or the TSA line. He just acknowledged that the Finals are weird. The best players are the ones who can admit that and still show up for Game 4. And the Knicks did.
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