Landry Shamet: The NBA’s Wandering Metaphor for a Fraying American Empire

Landry Shamet and the Quiet Collapse of the American Basketball Empire
By Our Man in Davos, nursing a lukewarm macchiato and a deeper existential chill

ZURICH—Somewhere between the fifteenth and sixteenth floor of the Marriott here—where hedge-fund analysts compare scars and room-service prices—Landry Shamet’s name surfaced over breakfast like a half-remembered password. The context: whether the U.S. can still export anything more durable than anxiety. The verdict: only basketball players, and even those arrive pre-owned.

Shamet, 27, currently shooting 38 % from three for the Washington Wizards, is not the sort of fellow who causes revolutions, currency runs, or even a modest run on artisanal coffee. And yet, in the grand bazaar of global soft power, he is a walking metaphor: a competent, slightly brittle role player shuttled across four franchises in six seasons like a diplomatic attaché nobody asked for. If the State Department issued passports for marginal floor spacing, Shamet would need extra pages.

Consider the itinerary: Philadelphia (birthplace of liberty and second-round playoff exits), Los Angeles (briefly, before Kawhi decided he preferred Paul George’s melancholy), Brooklyn (where James Harden’s beard consumed all available oxygen), Phoenix (the desert resort for disillusioned scorers), and now Washington—whose monuments to democracy feel increasingly aspirational. Each move accompanied by the same international press release: “shooter with size who can defend multiple positions,” which translates loosely to “will not complain when benched for a teenager.”

The global significance? First, note the audiences. When Shamet checked into a preseason game last October in Abu Dhabi—sponsored by a UAE sovereign wealth fund that could buy the entire NBA on a whim—Emirati teens in pristine Bradley Beal jerseys chanted “Sham-et, Sham-et,” practicing the universal tongue of ironic applause. A Serbian journalist leaned over and whispered, “Your empire sends us its sixth men; we send you Nikola Jokić. Fair trade.” I made a note to update the State Department’s barter ledger.

Second, the economics. Shamet’s latest contract, a reported $43 million over four years, is roughly the annual budget of the World Food Programme’s Yemen operation. One man’s corner-three gravity is another nation’s famine relief, but let’s not get moralistic—everyone in the league needs a second home in Turks and Caicos. The money itself is conjured from broadcast rights sold in 215 countries, including places where electricity is optional but League Pass is sacred. Capitalism’s final form: streaming pixels of a Kansan shooting guard to a hut lit by candle.

Third, the cultural residue. In Manila, where basketball courts are wedged between mausoleums and karaoke bars, Shamet’s jersey—ironically—outsells Steph Curry’s. Filipino fans adore the underdog story of a Wichita State walk-on turned journeyman; it mirrors their own talent for surviving on remittances and punchlines. A local pop-up sells “SHAMET HAPPENS” T-shirts beside bootleg Marvel merch. Intellectual-property attorneys sigh from the afterlife.

Meanwhile, across the EU, scouts dissect Shamet’s footwork like it’s the Talmud. French academies now produce 6’7″ guards who can shoot but also conjugate subjunctives. The continent’s revenge for decades of cultural imperialism is simple: export players who quote Foucault while setting drag screens. Shamet, blissfully monolingual, remains unaware he is Exhibit A in a PowerPoint titled “American Skillset: Declining Margins.”

Back home, the discourse is equally surreal. U.S. talk-radio hosts debate whether Shamet is “worth the tax hit” while the national debt clock spins like a slot machine in Reno. The same morning, a congressman from a gerrymandered district suggests trading him for border-wall funding. Satire files for unemployment.

And so we return to the Marriott elevator, ascending past floors where climate accords are ghostwritten and crypto fortunes evaporate. Landry Shamet is probably somewhere in Dupont Circle right now, icing his ankles, wondering if the Wizards will flip him for a protected second-rounder and a trade exception. He is the American condition in a nutshell: overqualified, underutilized, perpetually on the move, and still somehow convinced the next destination will be different.

The empire doesn’t fall with a bang or a whimper, dear reader. It signs a modest extension and agrees to a player option in 2026.