Mike Brown coached against Miles McBride in the past.
He already knew “Deuce” was a tough-nosed guard who plays both sides of the ball and competes every second he’s on the floor. He also knew McBride could score in bunches.
And then Brown stopped himself. There was something he didn’t know coming from Sacramento to New York.
“I take it back,” he said. “I didn’t know he could shoot it as well as he did, as well as he does.”
One hundred minutes later, the Knicks tipped off against the Toronto Raptors — and McBride wasted no time proving his new head coach right. He outscored Toronto, 12–10, by himself to open the game, drilling four of his first five threes in an unconscious first quarter.
“He’s a high level shooter. Also, his work ethic is really high. So those two things are something I learned being around him,” Brown continued. “But coaching against him, you know he’s tough and can defend. He can shoot, again — not as good as I thought he could, as I know he can now.”
McBride is enjoying the best season of his career in Brown’s first year in New York. His 11.4 points per game through 16 contests would set a new career high, as would the 43.3% he’s hitting from three — on by far the highest volume he’s ever taken. At more than six attempts per game, he’s the sixth-most efficient shooter in the league among players hoisting as many triples a night.
“I expect to make shots,” McBride said after his first-quarter eruption shifted the tone early against Toronto. “My teammates did a great job of find me. I just wanted to shoot it with confidence.”
The Garden crowd has confidence in him, too. Every time a three leaves his hands, the “Deuce” chants start rumbling — soft on a miss, explosive on a make. McBride hears them, but only after the ball drops through.
“Usually after it goes in the net,” he said. “That’s when I start listening a little bit. But whoever started [the chant], shout out to them.”
Yet for McBride, this is business as usual. Nothing new for a player who already owns one 40% shooting season. And while Brown admits he didn’t realize Deuce was this good of a shooter, McBride has always known.
“Honestly?” he said after thinking it over for a beat. “[I haven’t done] anything different than I’ve done my whole life.”
HART TALK TEAM’S IDENTITY
Josh Hart pushed back on the idea that the Knicks have shifted their offensive identity in recent games to lean more heavily on Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns’ individual strengths.
“Nah, I don’t think so. We haven’t tried to,” Hart said after Sunday’s victory over the Raptors. “Sometimes the game dictates what needs to happen and we don’t fight that. We’ve tried to play our style as much as we can and if the game dictates we try to go to that. But we’re comfortable with playing fast and executing.”
That’s not how opposing coaches see it.
Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic became the second straight opponent to say the Knicks have adjusted their style of play as the season has progressed.
“[The] first 10 or 12 games, 15 games — whatever it was — they were running more. And now it looks like they’re settling into more personnel and how they’re playing more to the strengths of their players, trying at the same time to implement ball movement and body movement,” Rajakovic said before tipoff on Sunday. “Obviously they are a very talented team, a lot of great players. So it’s the right thing to concentrate on the strengths of those guys and let them be who they are.”
Rajakovic echoed nearly word for word what Milwaukee’s Doc Rivers said two nights earlier: the Knicks are playing more Brunson-Towns pick-and-roll and less of the pure freelance, pace-and-space offense that defined their early-season identity.
“They’re not playing the same as they played earlier in the year,” Rivers said. “Earlier in the year, they were all drive-and-kick, very few pick-and-rolls. Now they’ve gone back to the Brunson-Towns pick-and-roll which makes a lot of sense. And yet they’re still trying to move the ball and play downhill and play draw-and-kick basketball, but I think the biggest change they have made since we played them is they have definitely added more pick-and-rolls since than they had when we played them the first game.”
NEW LINEUP
Towns addressed the Knicks’ new starting lineup after Sunday’s win over the Raptors. Brown recently shifted Hart into the starting group in place of Mitchell Robinson, a move that has paid immediate dividends. Robinson responded with 15 rebounds — seven on the offensive glass — in just 17 minutes, and the Knicks are now 4–0 since Hart joined the starters.
“It’s just a different lineup. Mitch in the starting lineup, Josh Hart in the starting lineup, we feel comfortable going out there every night that we have a chance to win,” said Towns. “And it’s because of the work we put in in practice and on our games individually in our free time. Josh has done a great job of playing recently, and he’s been fantastic all year, but any one of us could be in the starting lineup and feel like we can contribute and impact winning. So that just speaks to our locker room.”
