Inside Landry Shamet’s night in Knicks’ historic NBA Finals comeback
The words were stitched in cursive across the back of every hat in Landry Shamet’s personal rooting section Wednesday night.
Chop wood, carry water.
It was more than the mantra Shamet has carried with him since his Wichita State days, back when it seemed to appear beneath nearly every social media post and explain the way a skinny guard from Kansas City had turned himself into an NBA player.
On Wednesday night, that motto had followed him all the way to the NBA Finals.
There was Melanie Shamet in Section 105, stationed behind the visitor’s bench, surrounded by nearly a dozen friends and family members. She wore her son’s No. 44 Knicks jersey in blue and orange, her customized black hat turned backward. The hats all had the NBA Finals logo embroidered on one side, Shamet’s No. 44 on the other and that old motto across the back.
By the end of the night, after the Knicks erased a 29-point deficit, after OG Anunoby tipped in Jalen Brunson’s miss with 1.2 seconds left, after Madison Square Garden shook itself into pandemonium over a 107-106 win over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, the saying felt less like a personal creed and more like the story of the game itself.
There was no 29-point shot available to the Knicks.
There was no magic button to press, no single possession that could undo the mess they had made. All New York could do was the next right thing. One stop. One rebound. One deflection. One pass. One shot.
Chop wood.
Carry water.
And somehow, after the Spurs had led 81-52 in the third quarter, all those small jobs stacked on top of each other until Anunoby was crashing in from the perimeter, rising with his right hand and softly flicking the ball into the basket for what Knicks coach Mike Brown called “the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball.”
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns offered a shorter description.
“Right hand from God,” Towns said.
Shamet had one of the best views in the building.
When Brunson pulled up from well beyond the 3-point line, Shamet was on the floor and crashing from the right wing. He jumped right behind Anunoby, close enough to see the play unfold in real time.
“I saw his hand climb up there and get a hand on it,” Shamet said. “I thought he just deflected it, but somehow it went in. Crazy. Hell of a play by him.”
His first instinct was not to celebrate.
In true Shamet fashion, while teammates began to rush toward Anunoby, Shamet turned and dropped into a defensive stance, picking up Spurs guard Stephon Castle in case San Antonio tried to inbound quickly. The Spurs called timeout instead, giving the Knicks a chance to celebrate what may one day be remembered as the defining moment of their first championship run since 1973.
Shamet did not score Wednesday. He played 21 minutes off the bench, missed all three of his shots and finished without a point. But his fingerprints were still on the night in the ways role players often matter in championship basketball — in the defensive pressure, the connective passing, the spacing, the communication, the engagement from the bench when he was not on the floor.
He shouted out instructions. He tried to lift teammates. He turned toward the crowd during stoppages and urged more noise out of a fan base that needed very little convincing once the comeback started to feel possible.
“I don’t think any of us have ever seen anything like that,” Shamet said. “That’s a lot to process.”
Actually, one person in the Knicks’ locker room had seen something like it before: Shamet.
The Park Hill alum has now been part of the two biggest comebacks in NBA playoff history.
As a rookie with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2019, he helped complete a 31-point comeback against Golden State in Game 2 of a first-round series, hitting the game-winning 3-pointer with 16.5 seconds left in a 135-131 victory. That night stood as the largest comeback in NBA postseason history.
Now Shamet has a place in another comeback that will be replayed for decades, this one on the NBA Finals stage, in the world’s most famous arena, with the Knicks moving one win away from a title.
“Sense of urgency heightened, but nobody panicking, sticking together,” Shamet said. “You talk a lot about how you can’t get deficits like that back in one punch. We just slowly chipped away and trusted each other, trusted the process.”
Brunson carried the Knicks with 36 points. Anunoby finished with 33. The Garden, quieted for so much of the first half, grew louder with every cut into the deficit until the sound became less like cheering and more like a collective realization.
This might actually happen.
“When we were slowly walking them down, you feel it shift a little bit and there’s a little bit of hope that creeps in,” Shamet said. “If you’re in the building, everybody felt it. When it got to 10, it was like, ‘OK, we’re here. We’re in this. Let’s go make it happen.’”
Even 30 minutes after the final buzzer, the Shamet family section still had that can-you-believe-it look.
Melanie Shamet soaked in the scene. Longtime agent George Langberg, who has been with Landry since signing him out of Koch Arena, shook his head in disbelief nearby. Friends and family smiled, laughed, replayed the ending and tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Then Richard Rosenthal walked over.
Rosenthal was born and raised in New York City and has been a Knicks season-ticket holder for the last decade. But he also has a connection to Wichita State that began more than 1,300 miles from Manhattan.
A friend in Wichita invited him to a game at Koch Arena in 2014. Rosenthal met Gregg Marshall, was invited back to the locker room and fell in love with the whole experience — the noise, the edge, the toughness, the way those Shocker teams played with the kind of fight he had always admired in his favorite Knicks teams.
Since then, Rosenthal has become a Shocker super fan in New York City.
“They know me at the gym as the Wichita State guy,” Rosenthal said with a laugh. “And I’m a big Landry Shamet fan.”
When Rosenthal noticed Melanie’s Shamet jersey, he lit up. He congratulated her, raved about her son and shook her hand.
“What I love about Landry is he believes,” Rosenthal said. “All of these guys believe in themselves.”
Then he turned to leave, stepping back into the madness of Madison Square Garden, and delivered the line every Wichita State fan has thought for more than a decade.
“We shoulda beat Kentucky,” Rosenthal shouted, a nod to the 2017 NCAA Tournament showdown when Shamet and De’Aaron Fox, now on the Spurs, once dueled on opposite sides.
Melanie shook her head and cheered in agreement.
Of course, even here, at the NBA Finals, in the middle of one of the wildest nights in NBA history, Wichita State found its way into the conversation.
That has happened often around this franchise. Dave Stallworth and Nate Bowman won the 1970 NBA championship with the Knicks. Ron Baker became a cult favorite in New York years later and his jersey could still be spotted in the Garden during Game 4. Shamet is now one win away from joining a short list of former Shockers who have won NBA championships: Bowman, Stallworth, Cliff Levingston with the Chicago Bulls, and Shamet’s former WSU teammate Fred VanVleet with the Toronto Raptors.
After speaking with reporters inside the Knicks’ locker room, Shamet slipped back into the bowels of Madison Square Garden, where the roar from one of the wildest nights in NBA Finals history had finally softened into a series of family hugs and quiet smiles.
He embraced Melanie and his grandparents, who had made the trip to watch Game 4 in person. He greeted friends. He took selfies. He stopped for children. He gave them a moment, just as he used to do in Wichita when kids wanted a high five, an autograph, a picture or a chance to tell him they wanted to shoot like Shamet.
Even as Shamet was about to leave with his family, one young fan pleaded for one more picture. No one would have blamed Shamet for politely moving along after a night like that. Instead, he stopped, smiled for the photo and wished the kid a happy birthday before departing.
He remembered what it felt like to be that kid.
The stage has changed. The jersey has changed. The stakes have changed. The noise has grown louder than almost anything he could have imagined when he was starring for the Shockers.
But Shamet has not changed all that much.
Still chopping wood.
Still carrying water.
This story was originally published June 11, 2026 at 7:01 AM with the headline "Inside Landry Shamet’s night in Knicks’ historic NBA Finals comeback."
.jpg)