A particular type of college basketball player never quite shows up all at once. Among them was Landry Shamet. When he arrived at Wichita State in the fall of 2015, the Shockers were still riding high from their rise under Gregg Marshall, a program with more swagger than most mid-majors and a fan base that had high expectations. Shamet, a four-star recruit from Kansas City’s Park Hill High School, was expected to be a member of the upcoming generation. Then his foot failed. He participated in three games, skipped the remaining ones, and vanished into the kind of quiet rookie season that typically swallows bright freshmen.
He was not engulfed by it. That’s what’s worth stopping for. Many redshirts come back to discover that their bodies never fully recover to what the recruiting tape promised, or that the rotation has moved on without them. The following season, Shamet returned at 6-foot-4 and weighed a wiry 180 pounds. By January, he was playing point guard for a team in the top ten. Reading the stat lines again gives the impression that the coaching staff didn’t really give him the position—rather, they gave it to him. He shot 43.9 percent from three, averaged 11.4 points and 3.3 assists, and was selected for the First Team All-Conference and MVC Freshman of the Year. Then there was another foot surgery.
After that redshirt freshman year, you can practically picture the offseason. For the second time in eighteen months, an adolescent wearing a walking boot reported that his foot was the issue as he watched teammates run the floor without him. It would have been simple to make a mistake, return hesitantly, and begin protecting the body rather than using it. Shamet didn’t. He was on the preseason Wooden Award watch list going into his sophomore campaign, and by December, he was scoring a career-high thirty against Oklahoma State.
Scouts began keeping a close eye on that sophomore year. In addition to leading the AAC in assists per game, true shooting percentage, and offensive box plus/minus—the kind of sophisticated metrics that don’t make highlight reels but make front offices lean forward in their chairs—he averaged 14.9 points and 5.2 assists. Over his career, he had an effective field goal percentage of 60.9, which is the kind of statistic you should double-check because guards like Shamet aren’t meant to be that effective. He wasn’t particularly ostentatious. No above-the-rim moments, no signature dribble. Just a young child who continued to find teammates, make shots, and shoot 81% from the line as if it were nothing.
It’s difficult to ignore how much of his college persona was developed covertly. In all three of his seasons, the Shockers advanced to the NCAA Tournament, but Shamet never experienced the kind of March moment that makes a player famous. Rather than a single outstanding game, his scouting reputation grew through workout floors and analytics models. AP All-American Honorable Mention. Today’s Third Team USA. The kind of accolades that result in a player being drafted but being forgotten.
Observing what followed—the arduous NBA journey through Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Phoenix, Washington, and now New York—gives the impression that Wichita State imparted knowledge that most one-and-dones never acquire. How to hold off. How to overcome a foot that refused to cooperate. How to continue shooting while being a complementary piece. After two playing seasons, he left college and was selected 26th overall by the Sixers in the 2018 draft. The front office types who selected him essentially stated that they were purchasing the floor rather than the ceiling. That floor is still in place eight years later.
