Deuce McBride fits well with Knicks, ignores trade rumors
The Knicks' Miles McBride drives on Philadelphia 76ers' Eric Gordon during the second half of an NBA preseason game Thursday in Abu Dhabi. Credit: AP/Altaf Qadri
In watching the first tenuous steps by the Knicks as they try to adjust to the system of new head coach Mike Brown, it’s hard not to notice that Deuce McBride just seems to fit.
You want to run the floor? He’s a former highly recruited high school quarterback. You want to defend the length of the floor? He’s a 94-foot pest trained by Bob Huggins in college and refined by Tom Thibodeau for the first four seasons of his career.
If you want to speed up the game and stress pace, McBride seems made to excel in the system.
“For sure, Deuce is one of the most athletic guys I’ve been around,” Brown said. “His combination of power, strength, quickness, it’s off the charts for a guy his size. One time in practice, he went up and dunked the ball. I don’t know how he kept going up, up and up to dunk it. It surprised me. But he fits well with what we want to do, for sure.”
“It’s always fun to get up and down,” McBride said. “That’s what I like to do, make people play faster. Speed up people. I think for a guy that wants to play fast like me and having a coach like that, he definitely wants me to embrace it. Pick up people, make them turn and really guard my yard.”
It seems perfect, the kind of opportunity that McBride has been seeking since joining the Knicks as a second-round draft pick. He went from playing less than 10 minutes per game as a rookie to 24.9 minutes per game last season.
He’s playing on a discount contract, a three-year, $13 million deal he signed the same day the Knicks traded away Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett to create a greater opportunity for him. He’s one of the rare athletes in the NBA who undoubtedly play above their contracts.
But that’s what has made the rumors circulating this training camp so hard to imagine being real.
The Knicks are shopping contracts, trying to create a roster spot for at least two of the veterans that they signed to non-guaranteed contracts with only one spot available.
While the most chatter surrounds last year’s rookies, Pacome Dadiet, Tyler Kolek and Ariel Hukporti, McBride’s name has come up, too.
It’s unlikely that he would be moved. The Knicks are in a win-now mode, and McBride is a valuable part of that. But it is odd that it would even be a rumor.
However, although it may confound some, for McBride, it means nothing. He doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t read it. He doesn’t care about it.
“I don’t see any of it,” he said after a morning shootaround Saturday in Abu Dhabi. “I stay off of social media. Even before I got to the league, I feel like social media is a lot of negativity.”
That undoubtedly is true, likely truer than any trade rumor that includes McBride right now if it isn’t generated by his name being on another front office’s wish list.
With the Knicks restricted by the second apron of the NBA salary cap, a day may come when they have to decide whether the next contract that McBride will earn is too rich for them.
But they need him now, and he is concerned only with being a part of what the team is chasing.
“I mean, I love being here,” he said. “I want to be a Knick for life. I can’t control anything. So just going to come to work until they tell me otherwise.”
It’s not just the on-court fit. While he grew up in Ohio and went to college in West Virginia, he has taken to New York City, living in the city rather than the suburbs and embracing all that it has to offer. It’s a feeling that is aided by the fans falling for him from the time he arrived.
“Absolutely. I mean, when the fan base is behind you through the ups and downs, no matter what, it’s great to play in MSG,” McBride said. “It’s the Mecca of basketball. So being a Knick for these last couple of years has been amazing and I love the city.
“I love the city. I love the fans. Just being able to embrace the culture. I feel like it’s a hustle culture and I’m a hustle guy. So it’s perfect.”
He and his girlfriend welcomed their first child during the summer and he embarked on a brief book tour around the children’s book he wrote, “Deuce: The Champion of Friendship.”
“Really just want to spread positivity,” he said. “Continue to be a role model to the youth and help them believe that they can achieve anything as long as they work hard and have discipline in themselves.”
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.
