As the Sixers prepare to make the 22nd pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, we want to bring up another name that Philadelphia drafted in the 20s within the last decade. It just so happens that Landry Shamet is still playing basketball as the 26th pick by the Sixers in 2018, now with the Knicks and playing about 15-20 minutes per night off the bench for New York in the postseason.
Shamet’s game logs for the Knicks in these playoff rounds look a bit sporadic — and we’re certainly not attempting to condemn the Sixers
for including Shamet in the Tobias Harris trade back in February 2019. It feels like letting Isaiah Joe and Julian Champagnie go for nothing have elicited stronger condemnations from Sixers fans as both Joe and Champagnie have turned into rotation players in the Western Conference Finals. For what it’s worth, Oklahoma City and San Antonio have done a good job developing lots of players so the surges from Joe and Champagnie should probably be mostly attributed to what their current franchises have done for them and not necessarily what the Sixers didn’t do.
But that’s not the case with Shamet. Even though he did not even play one full season with the Sixers, Shamet came right in and did what many would probably like the 22nd pick in this year’s draft to do for the team. Having played three years of college basketball at Wichita State, Shamet was an instant bench contributor for the Sixers in 2018-19. It was a Sixers team that was (surprise, surprise) coming off a second-round loss in the 2018 playoffs and looking to accelerate towards contention. Shamet would average 20.5 minutes per game in the regular season with the Sixers and shoot 40% from the three-point line and 81.5% from the free throw line. He was looking like a pretty solid use of a late first-round pick.
However, as the 2018-19 season trudged along, Elton Brand felt the team needed more top-end talent and decided to cash in some bench pieces for Jimmy Butler and Harris. The irony is that Philadelphia was eliminated by a Toronto team that was mostly built on the depth it had behind Kawhi Leonard in 2019. Other recent champions like Milwaukee and Denver have seen rotations go 7-10 players deep behind their own superstars. It feels like New York, San Antonio and Oklahoma City are all similarly constructed now. So, Philly’s forever search for more stars doesn’t seem to have aligned with the way the league has trended.
As Shamet’s NBA career continued, he’s mostly been the same player he was in his short time with the Sixers, though he’s dealt with injuries. Between stints with the Clippers, Nets, Suns and now Knicks, Shamet has appeared in 64 playoff games, coming off the bench in the majority of those games. He’s a 37% three-point shooter in the playoffs. This is not an example of a late bloomer or someone who just found his way onto the right roster where he could be developed properly. This is someone who from the day he was drafted eight years ago has been the same useful NBA reserve.
To reiterate, Philadelphia’s trade for Harris and inclusion of Shamet in the trade back in 2019 was entirely understandable. The big mistake the Sixers made was re-upping with Harris on the big contract they gave him in the summer of 2019 when he was a free agent. For as unpopular as Harris was in Philly, he gave them a better chance to win in the 2019 playoffs than Shamet would have.
We’re simply asking the question if you’ve ever found yourself missing a player like Shamet in recent postseasons or if some of those feelings started to introduce themselves during the Knicks series this past season watching Shamet play for New York. Whether you miss Shamet or not, as we sit here eight years after the Sixers drafted Shamet, the Sixers are once again preparing for a draft pick in the 20s in which they hope to get a bench player that can help them build a deeper roster for future postseasons.
