Should The New York Knicks Keep Miles McBride In The Rotation?

The question that popped up time and time again before the trade deadline was whether Miles “Deuce” McBride had proved enough for the New York Knicks to stand pat at the trade deadline. The Knicks seemed to affirmatively state no on that front with the acquisition of Josh Hart.

The trade doesn’t necessarily spell the end of McBride, and it doesn’t even mean that his time in the rotation is officially over. Injuries and matchups may prove to be opportunities for him to continue to prove his worth. Tom Thibodeau will never completely shun a player with the defensive chops of McBride, but it’s fair to wonder how much of a role he’ll play on this team for this season.

The positional overlap is not a complete one-to-one between Hart and McBride. Hart has seen most of his minutes playing the wing for the Knicks, but his versatility allows him to play up or down a position. Taking a step back it’s important to identify what McBride has produced and what the Knicks as an organization can and will expect from him moving forward.

The 22-year-old was initially deemed a shrewd pick by analysts around the NBA after he was taken with the 36th overall pick in the 2021 draft. Many had him pegged as a 1st round pick with a defined skill set of defense, effort and improved shooting. He fit into the system at West Virginia perfectly and showcased an improved 3-point shooting percentage during his sophomore season. McBride seemed to encapsulate all the ways in which you “win” a basketball game.

At worst it seemed like he would be able to carve out a role as a guard off the bench. He showed bits and pieces of that player throughout his rookie season. He only had 12 games in which he played more than 15 minutes, but in those games the team performed admirably. They won nine of the matchups; McBride was a clear part of the winning as he had a positive plus/minus in eight of those games. His presence was helpful on a team devoid of true point guard play outside of Immanuel Quickley and the porous production of Kemba Walker.

This season it seemed as if McBride was going to be buried on the bench after the acquisition of Jalen Brunson. Derrick Rose, Evan Fournier, Quentin Grimes and Quickley all seemed to be higher in the pecking order which meant that it wouldn’t be out of the question for McBride to find himself playing in Westchester.

That didn’t last long, though. The New York Knicks got off to an inauspicious start. They were 6-7 over the first 13 games of the season and decided to drop Fournier from the rotation after a horrific defensive game in which the team surrendered 145 points at home to the Oklahoma City Thunder. The dominos started to fall as Derrick Rose missed a couple of games on a West Coast road trip due to injuries. It was the window of time that McBride needed in order to carve out a spot in the guard rotation.

McBride did just that. When Rose was healthy enough to return he played his normal minutes for a couple of games until he was squeezed out of the rotation when Thibodeau realized he needed more help on defense.

The Knicks were in the bottom-five in the NBA in defense up to that point in the season. A 23-game sample size isn’t ample proof of a trend but it can be quite indicative of team performance. The team needed some more juice and defensive connectivity to help spur some cohesion. McBride immediately made an impact.

The Knicks were terrible in the communication they used in getting over screens, the transition defense (still a problem) and in their overall effort. McBride, Quickley, and Grimes immediately gave the team a triumvirate of guards that could make a defensive impact by getting over screens and making proper rotations to open shooters. It led to the Knicks having a top-10 defense over the past two months, which is quite the turnaround and seemingly sustainable as the team moves forward.

The defensive impact of McBride is evident. He has a solid rate of deflecting passes on defense and is in the top quarter among guards in steal percentage. It’s clear that he can be an effective rotational player on that side of the court.

His offense still lags behind. He’s a reluctant shooter that often needs plenty of space to feel comfortable getting his shot off. You can tell that he often wants to defer to the main star that he’s put on the court with; his willingness to move the ball seems borne out of conservativeness rather than a desire for the best shot. That did start to change recently. His outing against the Philadeplhpia 76ers two weeks ago showed him uncorking it from deep. Thibodeau seemed to agree:

“That’s where your confidence comes from. We knew that the numbers were saying that [McBride] shoots the ball great in practice. So eventually it’s going to happen. I think the more he plays, he starts to slow down and gets [into a] rhythm and he’ll knock those shots down.”

McBride still has the confidence of Thibodeau, but the team currently has the 7th best point differential in the league. They are stalking the Brooklyn Nets in the standings and could bully themselves into the 5th spot over the next 22 games. Will Thibodeau open up the rotation to 10 players in order to get McBride some run? His recent coaching history seems to indicate the opposite since he has a tendency to lean on his top players, especially near the playoffs.

It seems obvious to what the Knicks should do if they find themselves in need of a defensive engine at the point of attack. It’s already worked once this year.