It was the last game of a four-game West Coast road trip near the tail end of marathon season. New York was missing their leader/starting PG, and the starters came out flat and looked exhausted.
The Knicks missed their first seven shots and failed to score a single point over the first four minutes of the contest. New York found themselves down 15 points (21-6) halfway through the first quarter. Would they finally let go of the rope and put it in cruise control, looking forward to a flight back to NYC? Knicks teams in the past certainly would have chosen that path, the one of least resistance.
But the group is different. We've seen Brunson and Randle carry the Knicks on their backs time and again this season, and we've also seen RJ Barrett have offensive bursts to push the team to a win.
Yet, on this night, it was the bench mob, led by Mile McBride and Josh Hart, that refused to let the Knicks lose. When an NBA team doesn't have a true top-tier "superstar," the only way they can finish a season 10+ games above .500 is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And that's what's going on in New York.
With the Blazers off to a scorching start Tuesday night, Deuce and the bench brigade came in and cooled them off. The Knicks reserves began chipping away at Portland's sizable lead early in the second quarter and had whittled it down to six points by halftime.
However, McBride's contributions weren't limited to just the defensive end on his particular evening. Deuce caught fire from downtown, and the sparks from his shooting hand seemed to ignite the Knicks' offense. New York exploded offensively in the third quarter, scoring 42 points on 71.4% (!) shooting. They were 15-of-21 from the floor, including 5-of-8 from three-point territory. IQ scored 14 points on five FG attempts in the third. RJ converted four of his five shots in the quarter as well.
New York stayed hot in the fourth, outsourcing Portland by 22 points in the second half and cruising to a 123-107 victory.
When the final buzzer sounded, Deuce had poured in a career-high 18 points (6-of-8 FGs) to go along with three assists, one steal, two blocks, and four 3-pointers in 24 minutes. "Deuce, you can't say enough about what he did. That's probably his best game as a pro," Thibs told reporters after the game.
"Honestly, I knew I needed to step up," McBride said. "End of a road trip, I felt like we came out flat, and I just wanted to be a spark, give energy and do what I can."
Those who have followed this newsletter since its inception know we have been big boosters of McBride since his rookie season, calling for him to see extended minutes dating back to last January. Decue finds ways to help his team win even when his shot isn't falling.
Asked about his career-high point total after Tuesday's win, McBride replied: "It's huge… But honestly, if I didn't score a point and we win, I'd still be happy. Just being able to impact the game however I can always is the number one thing. I think the second unit knows that when we get in, our job is just look at the score, understand what we have to do as a unit and move the needle. And I think we came in and did that."
On the season, New York allows just 104 points per 100 possessions with McBride on the floor, the lowest among all Knick rotation players. His individual Net Rating of +7.8 is second on the team (behind Josh Hart). Deuce is one of only six players in the NBA this season to have logged less than 700 minutes, yet posted a plus/minus north of +100.
And, my personal favorite McBride metric: Deuce has now played more than 15 minutes 26 times in his career. The Knicks are 21-5 in those 26 contests. That's a winning percentage of 80.8%.
The other key contributor off the bench last night was Josh Hart, who was playing his first game against the Blazers since they traded him to New York at the deadline. To borrow a phrase from the Oscars, Hart was "Everything Everywhere All at Once." He finished with 16 points, nine rebounds, eight assists, three steals, and two treys. According to Basketball-Reference, he is the first player in Knicks franchise history to match or exceed those totals in those categories in a game in which the player did not start.
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