Game 2 did not just put the Knicks into a 1-1 series. It put Landry Shamet's role under a harder light.
The basic numbers are rough enough: Shamet is 1-for-6 from three and 1-for-7 overall through two games against Atlanta, and he did not score in the 107-106 loss on April 21. But the more important detail is the coaching response. Mike Brown gave Jose Alvarado those minutes instead. Once that happens in a live playoff game, the discussion changes from patience to pressure.
Shamet's case has always been easy to understand. New York wants the floor spacing. The Knicks have said they believe in him as a shooter, and that belief made sense when the alternative was overreacting to a cold stretch. The problem is that this has not been one short dip. From the start of March through the end of the regular season, he shot 30.4 percent from deep, and he also missed five late-season games with a knee injury. That is enough context to make the slump feel less random and more structural.
Meanwhile, Brown just got a look at a different answer. Alvarado had fallen out of the rotation late in the season after arriving from New Orleans at the trade deadline, but in nine minutes against Atlanta he gave the Knicks three assists and two rebounds. That is not a star turn. It is something more useful for this moment: evidence that the Knicks can get functioning minutes from someone else.
That is the danger for Shamet. Playoff trust is not usually lost in one miss, but it can disappear once a coach finds a cleaner option for the same stretch of game. If New York entered this series hoping Shamet's shooting would eventually swing a quarter, Game 2 suggested the series may be moving too fast to keep waiting for that version of him to arrive.