McBride acclimates to role of Knicks’ floor general

LOS ANGELES

Deuce McBride came off the practice floor at the old Los Angeles Clippers training facility Sunday afternoon, drenched in sweat and his first comment was to ask if the media members minded if he sat down as he spoke.

It was an understandable request and not surprising to see how exhausted McBride appeared. The practice session ahead of Monday’s game at Sacramento is serving as a crash course in his new job. While it’s not being cast in ‘Becoming Jalen Brunson,’ McBride has become the stand-in for the player who has emerged as one of the biggest stars in the NBA. The Knicks captain Brunson has been nicknamed Captain Clutch for his propensity for coming up with the biggest offensive heroics when the situation is most perilous.

Brunson limped off the floor Thursday with a sprained right ankle that will sideline him for at least two weeks and likely longer with the team not ruling out the possibility of him losing the remainder of the regular season to rehabilitation. He was headed back to New York while the Knicks soldier on through this five-game road trip that has already endured two losses.

McBride stepped in as the starter Friday against the Clippers without even a practice session less than 24 hours after Brunson’s injury. He understandably struggled through one of his worst shooting performances of the season. The cries of “Deuce” from the New York fans crowded into Intuit Dome growing quieter as he was just 2-for-13 and the Knicks offense stalled at times.

So the day of work Sunday provided a chance to acclimate to the new role, orchestrating an offense missing its most dangerous weapon.

“It helps a ton obviously,” McBride said. “You never want a guy to go down. And having a back-to-back is tough. Still shocked from just the loss the night before, the loss of a player going down like that. Being able to get a practice, get chemistry with guys, is always good.

“I feel like I don’t think my job has to change too much. I’m going to be aggressive and look to score, but understanding we have a lot of great scorers out there and I need to be able to get those guys going first. That’s going to be my job.”

“For us, we have to maximize what he does best, his strengths,” Karl-Anthony Towns said about McBride. “Today was a good practice for us to integrate him into a part of the offense and then see what we can do to utilize him as best as possible.”

It’s not like he’s never done this before, McBride has been a point guard all of his life. But his strengths since joining the Knicks and seeing his role grow larger and larger have been a 94-foot intensity on defense and shooting ability that has rapidly increased season after season. With the ball in his hands he didn’t seem the weapon he was off the ball playing with the second unit when he would either be paired with Brunson or Cam Payne, allowing him to serve as a catch-and-shoot threat.

And in the Knicks starting lineup even Brunson often played off the ball with Josh Hart and at times Mikal Bridges serving as the initiator of the offense. So the Knicks believe that this won’t be a huge adjustment, but one that will grow as he plays in this role for however long Brunson is sidelined.

“Josh handling allows us to move Jalen off the ball at times,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “It’s a different point of attack for us. Guys get used to off the dribble and now you’ve got to do catch and shoot. Then there’s pace involved and then oftentimes as a five goes onto Josh, [he] has a great speed advantage. We can take advantage of that as well. Having that versatility, we had that before when we had Derrick [Rose] and [Immanuel] Quickley. We’ve always been interchangeable with our second unit. And I think that when you have multiple guys that can run pick and roll and get to a second pick and roll that puts even more pressure on the defense. Deuce fits into that perfectly. He’s got a great wingspan, so he plays a lot bigger than his actual size.”

Even if Brunson is slightly underrated defensively, his toughness, strength and smarts make up for what he lacks in size. McBride does provide a step up on that end of the floor. And there is another part of Brunson’s game that will be missed and that the Knicks must find a way to make up for: toughness.

This year’s team has seemed different than last year’s group and that was accentuated with the team expected to add 39-year-old P.J. Tucker to the roster Monday on a 10-day contract, providing a hard-nosed veteran for the locker room.

“It’s more what your actions are,” Thibodeau said. “That’s what we need. We need a team full of leaders. I think being mentally tough as a team, you want a group of leaders, a team of leaders. It’s not any one particular guy. It falls on the entire team. I’ve always been a big believer in that.”

McBride, a former highly recruited football player, may not score like Brunson, who had 39 points Thursday before the injury, but he can provide that toughness.

“I think our team right now is pretty tough,” McBride said. “Throughout the whole season we’ve had some great wins, some tough fight-it-out wins. And we got stops when we needed to get stops. Anybody that adds to it is going to be great.”