Steve Popper: Can Knicks keep Deuce McBride and remain below second apron of salary cap?
The Knicks' Deuce McBride speaks with the media during training camp on Wednesday in Tarrytown. Credit: Dawn McCormick
GREENBURGH — There was always a bond between Deuce McBride and Mitchell Robinson, the two serving as the longest tenured members of the Knicks last season as the team celebrated the NBA title. They were the only two who had been a part of the last losing season for the franchise, the players who spanned the turnaround at Madison Square Garden.
But now, the biggest question for the Knicks and McBride is, can they avoid another bond?
Robinson was left to walk away this summer as a free agent, the team unwilling to extend into the second apron of the salary cap to keep him. And now, with the Knicks attempting to repeat and McBride a key piece of that, he’s the one member of the rotation in the final season of his contract. He has no team or player options left, and a well-deserved payday awaits him next summer with no hint whether the Knicks will be able to pay it.
Unlike Robinson, who has battled a long history of injuries and departed after eight seasons with the same flaws that he arrived with, McBride has grown steadily as a player, in importance to the team, in the hearts of Knicks fans.
While he has rarely been a starter, it’s hard to imagine Madison Square Garden without the drone of, “Deuuuuuce,” every time he launches a three-point field goal attempt, a sound that even loudly accompanied the team to other cities last season. That makes the thought of losing him hard to imagine.
“Obviously I love being in New York,” McBride said after Wednesday’s practice. “I’d love to continue my career here, end my career here. . . . I feel like we’ve done, obviously, something great this past year and the years leading up to that with his team. I addressed it a little bit earlier with some comments, but, you know, I’ll let the front office and my agency handle that.
“I feel like, in a sense, every year you have to prove yourself,. I feel like there’s uncertainty across the board for everybody in the league. Everybody’s going for big contracts and this and that. So I don’t let it really bother me. At the end of the day, I just want to go out there and give it my shot, play my best basketball."
McBride has grown from a second-round pick viewed as a defense-first piece off the bench to one of the most dangerous long-range shooters in the game. He averaged a career-high 12 points on 41.3% shooting from beyond the arc last season. When the Knicks had a similar decision with Immanuel Quickly two seasons ago they dealt away Quickley rather than allow him to hit free agency and signed McBride to a new contract the same day. It was a crafty bargain for the team with McBride’s increased role coming with a three-year, $13 million extension.
He is almost certainly bound to get more than that total per year after this season, but with Karl-Anthony Towns and Josh Hart also up for extensions it’s a difficult dance for the front office to try to hold all of the pieces in place. The love affair between the team and the fan base would be tested if the second apron is used again as an excuse if it meant losing one of these key pieces to the franchise at a championship level.
“We’re going to face a lot of adversity and challenges throughout the course of the year,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “I addressed the group on that. I addressed some individuals. There will probably be a time and place where I talk to him about that because he’s human and we all want what’s best for ourselves, our families, as well as the organization. That’s a nice balancing act.
"But at the end of the day, he wants to be here. ,We want him to be here, and that’s something that I have faith in [Knicks president] Leon [Rose] and Deuce’s representatives to figure that out. It literally is the [salary] cap’s above my head. I don’t know how that works and we’ve got a lot of moving parts as we all know. So I’m going to let that unfold how it unfolds and in the mean time, we’re all just worried about how we can help each other on the court more than anything else because we know off the court, things get taken care of the right way here.”
Amid all of the celebrations, it was still a difficult season with McBride suffering a sports hernia that required surgery during the regular season. He worked to get back on the floor but was never fully healthy, averaging 5.6 points per game. Landry Shamet emerged as one of the key pieces off the bench in his place, earning a four-year, $24 million contract this summer after two years of trying to make the roster with non-guaranteed deals.
“I’m feeling a lot better,” McBride said. “It's kind of crazy, you know, thinking about how unhealthy I was playing through that playoff run. You go through surgery in an area where you need it . . . They took my hip flexor, my ab and my groin and they pulled it and they put it in my pelvis and they did it on both sides. So trying to open a door, reach for a remote and everything you do is in that core section, so trying to keep up with those young guys in the Finals was tough. … Just glad that we got it done.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
