Knicks' Deuce McBride sticking to his routine while filling in for Jalen Brunson
Knicks guard Miles McBride brings the ball upcourt against the Mavericks during the first quarter at Madison Square Garden on Feb 8. Credit: Brad Penner
When he finished off his pregame workout routine, the typical shooting, stretching and ballhandling drills that every player goes through, Deuce McBride capped it with one more usual bit of his routine when he caught a lob and threw down a dunk that dropped jaws from the fans crowded into the lower bowl at Madison Square Garden.
It’s the routine he does when he isn’t playing at all or when the minutes come sparingly, but Tuesday night McBride knew his assignment against Atlanta. He was starting in place of Jalen Brunson and it was going to be an arduous task. And he still stuck to the routine.
“You have to stick to your routine,” McBride said with a laugh.
But at least on this night he knew what awaited him, unlike Sunday when Brunson went down with a left knee contusion on the Knicks' first possession of the night in Cleveland, heading straight to the locker room with the aid of teammates and trainers just 47 seconds into the game. And McBride entered with no time to prepare. He never got a second of a breather as he played the entire game from that point.
He was in the starting lineup Tuesday as Brunson was ruled out with the knee contusion. The Knicks seemed to avoid a frightening situation as Brunson underwent an MRI Monday when the team returned to New York and like the X-rays, it came back clean.
“He’s feeling better. Just not quite there yet,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Just when he’s ready to go, he goes. In the meantime, just like what we did the last game. Deuce get in there, get the job done. We’ve got Alec [Burks]. So we’ve got more than enough.
“I think the same holds true for all. You don’t want to see any of your players get hurt. I know the commitment that our guys have made, the sacrifices they’ve made. Obviously you want to be at full strength. But injuries are part of the game and it’s ‘How quickly can we adapt as a team?’ That’s the challenge that we face.”
McBride joked that the work wasn’t done after helping guide the Knicks to the win in Cleveland. Doing it on a national broadcast and adding in a move that dropped Evan Mobley to the floor as he shook past him had his phone blowing up afterward.
“Yeah, definitely, especially when you’re on ESPN, national TV,” McBride said. “People are always going to reach out when you’re playing well. They were definitely texting me about that one.”
McBride took it in stride, shouldering the heavy workload on a moment’s notice Sunday.
“That was a lot of trust coach put in me and I just wanted to give it my all,” McBride said after Sunday's game. “I feel fine honestly. That’s what I put in the offseason work for. I prepare my body for this. You never know what’s going to happen. JB should be fine hopefully, but got to be ready for anything.”
That is a huge part of the message that Thibodeau imparts on his teams — a next man up mentality and an insistence that there is enough talent in the locker room to get the job done even when it’s someone like Brunson who is sidelined, along with Julius Randle, OG Anunoby and Mitchell Robinson.
“Honestly, I mean, obviously he’s an all-star player so of course it’s going to feel different,” McBride said. “You can’t think about it like that. You can’t go into a game thinking man down. You’ve got to go in thinking we’ve got everything we need.”
McBride didn’t just play the whole way Sunday, but contributed 16 points, including a dagger three-pointer with 32 seconds left. He didn’t turn the ball over once, all while chasing Darius Garland around the court.
“Just reading the game well,” Thibodeau said. “Usually your turnovers are coming from either too much one on one or risky passes. He’s just letting the game come to him, he’s letting the game tell him what to do. And then we have a number of other guys that are making good plays as well. So I think they’ve created a lot of advantages for each other and they played off each other extremely well in the Cleveland game.”
He managed to get through it without showing any ill effects Sunday, which prompted Donte DiVincenzo, one of his slightly more veteran teammates, to offer an explanation.
“He’s got them young legs,” DiVincenzo said. “It’s really difficult, especially when you’re matched up with Darius Garland. You have to tip your hat to him being ready, being locked in, play the entire game, but that’s kind of who Deuce is. All season long, whether his number is called or not, he’s one of the hardest workers on the team.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
