The Knicks shot the lights out of the Rocket Arena, but nobody took that old adage literally.
That was until the lights really went out during a post-game interview Monday night. Landry Shamet, the sharpshooting Knicks guard, was around a minute into his interview with ESPN’s “Inside the NBA” when it appeared most of the lights in the arena shut off.
During the interview, Shamet praised his entire team for their shooting successes throughout the playoffs.
“The beautiful thing of this group is it could be a different guy every night,” Shamet said “Josh Hart had a great shooting night this series when they were sagging off him, he made a bunch of shots. It could be Duce, it could be anybody off the bench.”
Shamet went 11-for-12 from 3-point range over the four games. Nobody in NBA playoffs history ever shot that efficiently in one series.
Coincidentally, the last time the playoffs saw a lights-out shooter like Shamet in a series was in 2017, when Cavaliers guard Kyle Korver went 11-for-20 from beyond the arc against the Toronto Raptors.
Shamet’s sharpshooting was a key piece in the Knicks’ Eastern Conference finals sweep. Out of the 11 shots he made, none were more important than his game-tying 3-pointer with just 47 seconds left in Game 1.
That crucial shot helped propel the Knicks to win in overtime, setting the momentum for the rest of the series.
The Knicks locked their spot into the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. They beat Cleveland by double-digits every game of the series. The first time a team swept and achieved those win margins before the finals since the 1950 Lakers
The Knicks also hold a +19.4-point differential throughout the playoffs, the highest in NBA history since the 2017 Golden State Warriors’ +16.3.
The team will now have a long stretch off until the finals start on June 3.
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The players and fans will continue to wait to see who their opponent is as the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder continue to battle in the West.
One thing is certain: the lights are still on in the Knicks’ quest towards an NBA championship