New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown had plenty of trust in guard Miles McBride last year. The coach wasn't afraid to give the reserve a unique pair of green lights, telling reporters in January that McBride had earned everlasting permission to both shoot — and set screens for teammates — whenever he wanted.
Center Mitchell Robinson's departure for the in-division Boston Celtics made McBride the longest-tenured player on the Knicks' roster. He turned 26 years old at the start of September, underscoring just how much change Leon Rose's front office has made in their time on New York's end of the phone. But the 2026-27 season is the final year of McBride's second contract with the Knicks, with the 3-and-D point guard on track to become part of 2027's class of unrestricted free agents.
Rose can still stop that from happening, though, by signing McBride to an extension before the 2026-27 season even starts. While an extension will likely be worth tens of millions of dollars, McBride simply impacts the Knicks' play at that high of a level. And getting a deal done before the season starts might just wind up being the smartest move for New York, a team getting set for their first full regular season of deploying Karl-Anthony Towns as a playmaking center.
Towns' new role will highlight McBride's strengths — and hide his flaws
The Knicks empowering Towns as a playmaker from the top of the key helped turn their entire first-round playoff series against the Atlanta Hawks around. Quin Snyder's group had wing defenders to try and mitigate Jalen Brunson's scoring impact, but didn't have the talent or depth to deal with Towns' ability to shift Brunson and OG Anunoby into off-ball scoring roles.
McBride had a relatively rough postseason overall, potentially just a reasonable aftereffect of the sports hernia surgery that sidelined him for almost two months of the regular season. The guard averaged just 5.6 points per game throughout the Knicks' championship run. While he made 37.5% of his 3-point attempts in the process, he shot just 33.3% from the floor overall, though.
The low conversion rate was a result of his inability to make more than a fifth of his shots from inside the arc against New York's playoff competition. While they were certainly below his averages, and in line with an unfortunately lengthy recovery, these results were indeed somewhat microcosmic for the guard.
McBride is typically a remarkably accurate 3-point shooter, even on high volume, but struggles with both of the inner two levels of half-court scoring. Once the Knicks got Towns going as a playmaker, though, things changed for their young point-of-attack stalwart. He even closed the team's second-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers with a 25-point game, making seven of his nine 3-point attempts en route to the first of two Knick sweeps.
The 26-year-old essentially has a small wing's skill set, excelling at making open 3-point shots and defending 1-3 with an emphasis on stopping the ball. His 6-foot-2 frame very much makes him a guard.
His skills and motor, however, make him the exact kind of guard that's perfect for helping Towns-led lineups force opponents into counters — or punishing them for leaving a shooter open.
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