An offseason full of competence has led us to this moment — the start of preseason, and the reckoning that comes with realizing that extremely Thibs-y rookie Deuce McBride might not get minutes this year, despite a stellar Summer League. The best part? That’s totally OK.

Isn’t it, well, usually, a bit more emotionally turbulent than this, a New York Knicks preseason? Full of angst and questions and unknowns. Loud and messy and click-worthy. This year, for once, it’s all very neat, very predictable — almost boring. The clicks have migrated ever so slightly southeast. Up here, at 4 Penn Plaza, the streets are controversy-free and wonderfully quiet. Tumbleweeds tumble, as somewhere behind closed doors, it’s all work, work, and more work for the nonsense-free ‘Bockers.

What could possibly disrupt this balmy preseason postcard?

Somewhere, in the heart of the head of the most militant mind in basketball, in the depths of a fiercely competitive skull, a juicy tension is hibernating amidst the hope and anticipation of a shiny new season. Here, a deeply-felt basketball belief is preparing to do battle with a deeply-felt basketball love. 

I am of course talking about Tom Thibodeau, his hallowed 10-man rotation, and the existence of the lab-built defensive berserker known as Miles “Deuce” McBride. The Knicks rookie is on the outside of this rotation, looking in, through binoculars, at a towering gauntlet of back court depth. Really, injury or rest are the most realistic route to consistent minutes for the rookie, which is a truck-sized test of the reigning Coach of the Year’s rotational resolve, given that Deuce the player is to Thibs the coach as gabagool the food is to Tony Soprano the man.

Welcome to Thibs vs. Thibs. Head vs. heart. Icy practicality vs. burning passion. 

Welcome to a very serious and totally manufactured preseason jeopardy, a jeopardy made possible by the luxury of competence, a competence rooted in the novel reality of having a good front office give a good coach a roster full of good players. 

Welcome to a psychological thumb war of glorious insignificance, all the more fun to discuss for how jarringly uncontroversial the Knicks’ rotation is heading into the 2021-22 season. 

The Law of the 10-Man Rotation is a fundamental tenet of a Thibodeau-ian team. The very notion of Thibs compromising such a core coaching belief, bending the rules of a principle written in stone, changing Standard Coaching Operating Practice, to accommodate, of all people, a rookie, is frankly laughable. This is a man whose identity is a tight weave of principles and rules: they are non-negotiable. They are non-negotiable for a reason. That reason is winning.

You see, Tom has this crazy theory that playing his best basketball players more gives him his best chance to win basketball games. This crazy theory tends to squeeze Tom’s rotations into a tightly clenched fist of starters and backups and backups to the backups, with relatively little role-based mobility.

Seventy-two quick-and-dirty glances at last season’s box scores confirm this point. Excluding garbage time, or 30 second cameos, the tally is as follows: 10-man rotation in 40 games, 9-man rotation in 22 games, 8-man rotation in five games, and an 11-man rotation in five games.

Translation: Thibs is more likely to shorten than lengthen his rotation over the course of a season, and about as likely to consistently extend his 10-man rotation as I am to make his 10-man rotation.

If you ignore the rest of his coaching career, it could be argued that the fist of last year’s rotation was a little tighter than even Thibs likes, given the relative lack of talent on last year’s shallower roster. Especially early, where festering little pockets of Kevin Knox, Austin Rivers, or Dennis Smith Jr. minutes can be found. 

This season, the 5-man platoons are pretty much in pen: Kemba Walker, Evan Fournier, RJ Barrett, Julius Randle, and Mitchell Robinson/Nerlens Noel; backed up by Derrick Rose, Immanuel Quickley, Alec Burks, Obi Toppin, and Nerlens Noel/Taj Gibson. 

Those starters will play a boatload of minutes. Leaving scarce opportunity for that bench quintet — the one with Gibson at center, which, per Cleaning The Glass, of 5-man lineups to play a minimum of 250 possessions, was the sixth-most potent unit in the entire NBA, sporting a +17.9 point differential — to cook. Every one of that bench unit has a persuasive argument for more minutes.

That leaves McBride, Quentin Grimes, and Knox to back up the very qualified and entrenched backups. 

Surely none of them can crack the hallowed 10, right? Not even Deuce “Defensive Gabagool” McBride?

Here is a man with hands the size of novelty foam hands. Here is a man with the wingspan of an angry pterodactyl. Here is a man who plays defense like a heart pumps blood. 

If you watched McBride in Summer League and watched Tom Thibodeau watch McBride in Summer League, you know how easy it would be in any normal Knicks year with a normally gaping positional hole at point guard to find Deuce as many minutes as he can handle. But those days, mercifully, are gone. McBride was one of the best players in the tournament in Vegas, shot a scorching 50% from three on six attempts a game, lived up to his lofty defensive reputation — and somehow is still in need of a miracle to get on the court.

If anyone can harass and pester a miracle into existence, though, it’s this kid. He was fourth in the Big 12 in steal percentage and — at a compact 6-foot-1 — 12th in block percentage. Now, I wonder what our happily miserable leader thinks of rim-protecting point guards? Oh, and he was in the 92nd percentile from 3-point land as a spot-up shooter in college. That Summer League stroke was no fluke.

So, just to say it out loud, the Knicks of New York, the Mecca of project point guards, coached by this particular coach, have a sharp-shooting, rim-protecting point guard who’ll be burning a hole on the bench this season. Got it. But there is a chance, a very small chance, that this is the type of moth and flame situation that starts out as a mildly amusing preseason nothing, but actually does break rotational laws, and ends in tears of thanks on emotional podiums in famous halls.

It’s not impossible. Cut me some slack. I’m weening myself off the jeopardy.

Players like Deuce operate in the marrow of coaches like Thibs, dance in his DNA, frolic in his dreams. That he might not play is the tip of the stories iceberg here, with the real mass of the story somewhere deeper, happily floating beneath the surface: the real story is that this isn’t more of a story. That the Knicks are so uncontroversially and pleasantly good that a perfectly packaged plate of gabagool — clearly labelled “FOR THIBS - HANDS OFF” — can’t find its way out of the fridge.

Fortunately, for Knicks fans, in the very real battle of Thibs vs. Thibs, there are no losers. Either we get to eat the tasty treat, or life is so good that we don’t need the tasty treat. 

It’s a win-win. 

Tumbleweeds > turbulence. 

The Knicks — a good team with good players — are normal.