Knicks' Deuce McBride acclimating to role of floor general
Knicks guard Miles McBride, left, shoots as Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James defends during the second half of an NBA basketball game Thursday, March 6, 2025, in Los Angeles. Credit: AP/Mark J. Terrill
LOS ANGELES
Deuce McBride came off the practice floor at the old Los Angeles Clippers training facility on Sunday afternoon, drenched in sweat, and his first comment was to ask if the media members minded if he sat down as he spoke.
It was an understandable request and not surprising, given how exhausted McBride appeared. The practice session ahead of the Knicks’ game at Sacramento on Monday night is serving as a crash course in his new job.
While it’s not being cast in “Becoming Jalen Brunson,’’ McBride has become the stand-in for the player who has emerged as one of the NBA’s biggest stars. Brunson has been nicknamed “Captain Clutch’’ for his propensity for offensive heroics when the situation is most perilous.
Brunson limped off the floor Thursday with a right ankle sprain that will sideline him for at least two weeks and likely longer, with the team not ruling out the possibility that he will lose the remainder of the regular season to rehabilitation. He was headed back to New York while the Knicks soldier on through this five-game road trip that has begun with two losses.
Less than 24 hours after Brunson’s injury, McBride stepped in as the starter Friday against the Clippers without even a practice session. He understandably struggled through one of his worst shooting performances of the season. The cries of “Deuce!” from the Knicks fans crowded into Intuit Dome grew quieter as he shot 2-for-13 and the Knicks’ offense stalled at times.
So the day of work Sunday provided a chance to acclimate to the new role, orchestrating an offense missing its most dangerous weapon.
“It helps a ton, obviously,” McBride said. “You never want a guy to go down. And having a back-to-back is tough. Still shocked from just the loss the night before, the loss of a player going down like that. Being able to get a practice, get chemistry with guys, is always good.
“I feel like I don’t think my job has to change too much. I’m going to be aggressive and look to score, but understanding we have a lot of great scorers out there and I need to be able to get those guys going first. That’s going to be my job.”
“For us, we have to maximize what he does best, his strengths,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “Today was a good practice for us to integrate him into a part of the offense and then see what we can do to utilize him as best as possible.”
It’s not as if he’s never done this before. McBride has been a point guard all of his life. But his strengths since joining the Knicks and seeing his role grow larger and larger have been a 94-foot intensity on defense and shooting ability that has rapidly improved season after season.
With the ball in his hands, he didn’t seem the weapon he was off the ball while playing with the second unit, when he would be paired with Brunson or Cam Payne, allowing him to serve as a catch-and-shoot threat.
And in the Knicks’ starting lineup, even Brunson often has played off the ball, with Josh Hart and at times Mikal Bridges serving as the initiator of the offense. So the Knicks believe that this won’t be a huge adjustment and one that McBride will grow into as he plays in this role for however long Brunson is sidelined.
“Josh handling allows us to move Jalen off the ball at times,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “It’s a different point of attack for us. Guys get used to off the dribble and now you’ve got to do catch and shoot. Then there’s pace involved and then oftentimes as a five goes onto Josh, [he] has a great speed advantage. We can take advantage of that as well.
“Having that versatility, we had that before when we had Derrick [Rose] and [Immanuel] Quickley. We’ve always been interchangeable with our second unit. And I think that when you have multiple guys that can run pick-and-roll and get to a second pick-and-roll, that puts even more pressure on the defense. Deuce fits into that perfectly. He’s got a great wingspan, so he plays a lot bigger than his actual size.”
McBride does provide a step up on defense. But there is another part of Brunson’s game that will be missed: toughness.
This season’s team has seemed different from last season’s group. The Knicks are expected to add 39-year-old P.J. Tucker to the roster Monday on a 10-day contract, providing a hard-nosed veteran for the locker room.
“It’s more what your actions are,” Thibodeau said. “That’s what we need. We need a team full of leaders. I think being mentally tough as a team, you want a group of leaders, a team of leaders. It’s not any one particular guy. It falls on the entire team. I’ve always been a big believer in that.”
McBride, a former highly recruited football player, may not score like Brunson, but he can provide that toughness.
“I think our team right now is pretty tough,” he said. “Throughout the whole season, we’ve had some great wins, some tough fight-it-out wins. And we got stops when we needed to get stops. Anybody that adds to it is going to be great.”
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.
