2021-22 Knicks Season Preview: Miles “Deuce” McBride

A defensive menace in college and Summer League, Miles “Deuce” McBride has “Thibs” written all over him. Can he crack the rotation in his rookie year with his extremely useful skillset?

With the 36th pick in the NBA Draft, the New York Knicks selected one of the Thibs-iest prospects in recent memory. I thought Miles “Deuce” McBride would intrigue Tom Thibodeau for many of the same reasons Isaac Okoro (according to reports) did a year ago: a linebacker’s frame and mentality on defense with the ability to completely take offensive players out of their element. Most basketball fans prefer watching entertaining offense, but even a casual observer couldn’t help but be mesmerized by McBride’s ability to put offensive players in general with relentless harassment. McBride also brings a terrific pull-up shooting game with good passing instincts. Let’s dive in, shall we?

What McBride brings

McBride is a physically impressive player. He’s easy to pick out on the floor. At 6-foot-1 without shoes, 200 lbs., and a massive 6-foot-9 wingspan, McBride has a grown man’s body, and yet also has a frame that looks like it could add 15-20 pounds without affecting his speed. This size and strength helps him hold up on defense and complements an extremely disruptive on-ball attack. Combined with his strong instincts, feline quickness, and pitbull mentality, he is a breathtaking defensive presence.

But a picture says a thousand words, and a video is… lots of pictures. Here is Deuce McBride in two plays:

BRB, I need to take a cold shower. 

OK, I’m back. Whew! If you’re like me, you’ve watched that sequence a thousand times since the Knicks took Deuce. Even before the first steal, notice how the point guard turns his back to the basket barely after crossing half court. Deuce’s activity has forced him to turn away from the basket. This is something a lot of players with weak handle will do… so it is especially jarring to see Deuce elicit that reaction from No. 1 pick Cade Cunningham. At 6-foot-8 with good handles, excellent vision, and a strong frame, you would think Deuce would struggle with Cade… and yet he owned that first possession. 

But he can play off-ball, too! As the second play shows, Deuce’s combination of length and instincts make him a menace hopping passing lanes, and because of his speed he can easily turn a play like that into a pick six. Of course, dunking on the No. 1 pick at the end is just the cherry on top. 

McBride continued to excite Knicks fans with his Richard Sherman defense at Summer League. Here he is destroying Draft Twitter’s favorite point guard of this class, Sharife Cooper. Note that although Cooper is not a good shooter, Deuce doesn’t win by simply baiting a jump shot — he suffocates Cooper into submission, contesting and forcing an airball while also preventing a drive (gReAt RiM pReSsUrE).

Now, for many prospects in this mold (big, physical defender with great quickness), we tend to see an offensive game built around physical drives and athletic finishes but poor shooting (think Marcus Smart). But this is where Deuce is a little unusual: he combines a terrific pull-up shooting game with something left to be desired when attacking the rim. 

His footwork is excellent. He does a great job of creating space here, even though he misses the shot. 

Off of the catch, Deuce is a gifted shooter with a compact release and good mechanics. 

McBride loved pulling up going to his right off a pick-and-roll and was deadly in these situations. Going under screens is not an option against him, and sometimes even a good rearview contest isn’t enough. 

Deuce played point guard in college and displayed good passing ability. One challenge he faced was playing on a team with poor spacing. As a result, he was not able to play much in spread pick-and-roll or put pressure on the rim (more on this in a bit). 

When he did get to play in space, the threat of his shooting and his improved ball handling led to some impressive results. 

This is a beautiful split and impressive body control and vision to avoid the charge and hit his teammate for the easy finish. Deuce showed the ability to leverage his gravity on drives to find open shooters. He also looked to push the ball in transition, showing skill as a lookahead passer. He’s not Tyrese Haliburton, but with his size and rebounding ability he can be a nice fit with someone like Obi Toppin, who loves to leak out after contests and runs the floor hard. 

Lastly, he also does a great job finding trailing shooters in semi transition after pushing the ball. With the way the Knicks have emphasized playing faster this year, he should be able to slide right in, whether he’s next to another point guard or on-ball himself. 

(For an excellent breakdown and the source for some of these clips, check out this excellent video by Adam Spinella.)

Are there any areas for improvement? The biggest thing for Deuce is improving his ability to attack the rim. Despite being built like a linebacker, he averaged just 1.38 unassisted baskets at the rim per 40 minutes. For comparison, Bones Hyland, who doesn’t even weigh enough to play slot receiver, averaged about 2.3. The poor spacing at West Virginia didn’t help, but we saw McBride settle for jump shots in Summer League as well. 

McBride is a very good midrange shooter and does do a good job of drawing fouls (a respectable 0.338 FTR in college), but one tendency he has is to snatch back and pull up for a jump shot after getting a step on his defender, rather than getting his chest into his defender and using his size and physicality to finish at the rim. He did shoot 60% at the rim (according to Hoop Math) in college and is a solid athlete, so the tools are there. Improving his handle is necessary, but I think the bigger issue is having that attacking mentality rather than settling for a jumper. I think he needs more reps to get comfortable finishing over and through size at the rim. Given how he plays defense, I don’t think he’s truly contact-averse, and I think this issue will get fixed in time. When it does, we could be talking about a true three-level scorer with enough passing to play on ball and the defensive chops to be a menace on- and off-ball. But that’s probably still a year or two away. 

What to look for this year

I expect Deuce’s role to be something like Frank Ntilikina’s last year. Ntilikina got minutes at point guard when the Knicks were hit with injuries. Although he ended up out of the rotation for most of the year and the Knicks let him walk, Thibodeau was clearly a fan of the upgrade he gave the Knicks as a point-of-attack defender, sticking him on crucial possessions at the end of halves (and yes, one of them was that disastrous Trae Young drive at the end of Game 1).

But I’m not here to talk about Frank. I can see Deuce being used as a defensive specialist, especially since the Knicks do not really have a point-of-attack defender to help them against quick point guards (RJ Barrett is probably best on wings and shooting guards). 

It’s also quite likely Deuce will get some time if Kemba Walker or Derrick Rose miss some time. Given their injury histories, it’s possible that this will happen, and even if it doesn’t, there may be some games one or both of them rests (yes, I know what Thibodeau said, but sometimes even he can have a surprise up his sleeve). In these games, Deuce will likely not be asked to create as much, as the Knicks still have Julius Randle, Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, and Alec Burks even without the point guards. But if he can hit open shots (and there will be open shots), bring energy on defense and in transition, and run the occasional pick-and-roll, that will be plenty. 

The question with Deuce is if he has enough ability to get to the rim and finish to set up drive and kicks. From watching him in college, my feeling is that West Virginia’s offense (which lacked spacing) forced him to pull up from mid range even when he got a step on his man. The downside is this can be a bad habit to fall into. A more pessimistic view might suggest that he simply lacks the burst to consistently break down defenses. Personally, I think he has a good first step, and while his handle isn’t super tight, he has shown the ability to put together crossovers and combination moves. Can he put it all together? 

For his long-term development, look at how much the Knicks are able to get him to force the issue and get downhill/to the rim more instead of settling for mid-range jumpers. Even if he plays off-ball next to Quickley or Rose, he’ll likely get to run more pick-and-roll that he did in college, and it will be interesting to see how he adapts and if this can unlock more of his passing and rim pressure. A step forward here would bode quite well for a bigger role in 2022.