The New York Knicks brought Brooklynite Jose Alvarado back home at the trade deadline. Along with their buyout market acquisition of 2022 lottery pick Jeremy Sochan, they seem to have their roster set for their 2026 playoff run. Superstar and team captain Jalen Brunson was asked about the Knicks' new guard at his third All-Star Weekend, telling reporters that Alvarado will fit right in because of his dedication to finding a way to win. Outside of everything that one can quantify on a stat sheet about Alvarado's game, his grit and toughness are why he's such an important addition for New York.
Brunson has high praise for new Knick point guard
Asked about his new teammate, Alvarado, on NBA TV's The Association, Brunson had high praise for the native New Yorker.
"Dude's great, man. Like, you can say all the nice things about him you want. There's so many nice things you can say about him. But he works hard, he wants to help the team win. That's all he wants to do, he doesn't want anything else," Brunson told Chris Haynes for NBA TV.
Alvarado fits right in alongside Josh Hart, Landry Shamet, Mitchell Robinson, and the recently-injured Deuce McBride as part of the role player contingent of the Knicks' roster. It's also the group of the roster that most often sacrifices their statistics, bodies, and overall on-court comfort in order to help the team win games.
McBride's injury unfortunately makes Knicks' Alvarado trade look better
With McBride seemingly needing to miss the entire rest of the regular season after undergoing surgery on his core, the Knicks swung the trade for Alvarado with especially opportune timing. Once the 25-year-old guard is back, New York's new roster will hopefully be at full strength for the first time all season.
Until then, though, Alvarado can help replace not just McBride's production, ball handling, and shooting off of the bench – but also his defensive grit. It clearly wasn't part of anybody's plans for McBride to sustain the ailment and require surgery, but having Alvarado around helps make the situation tenable.
Even with Robinson unavailable for half of every back-to-back, the team's depth is good enough to get through the rest of the regular season. The Knicks went into the All-Star Break with a 35-20 record that has them in third place in the Eastern Conference, just 0.5 games behind the Boston Celtics.
While it's fair to think that nobody will catch the 40-13 Detroit Pistons, the Knicks have a chance to close the gap in their first game out of the midseason break. New York starts the final third of its season with a two-game home stand against the Pistons and then Houston Rockets.