When OG Anunoby went down in Game 2 against the Philadelphia 76ers, Miles McBride got the call. With about 2:30 left in the fourth quarter Wednesday night, Mike Brown put McBride into the game, and he helped New York lock up the win with the kind of defensive stops the Knicks needed most.
That mattered because McBride was not supposed to be the headline here. He was drafted out of West Virginia early in the second round of the 2021 NBA Draft, a useful guard who became more important after the Knicks effectively traded RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley for Anunoby and created a new need in Tom Thibodeau’s rotation. New York then signed McBride to a reported three-year, $13 million contract extension, a deal that now looks like one of the better values on the roster.
The Knicks are already committed to paying Jalen Brunson, Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart more than $120 million in the 2027-28 season, so every affordable piece matters. McBride is entering a contract year in 2026-27, which gives his next stretch with the team extra weight. For New York, the question is no longer whether he can fill minutes. It is whether the Knicks can keep a player who has shown he can change a game when the margin is tight.
That concern is not abstract. The Knicks have seen how hard it can be to hold onto an internal success story, and they learned from the Isaiah Hartenstein situation that developing a player and offering a significant raise may not be enough to keep him. McBride’s minutes Wednesday were another reminder that cheap production has real value in a roster built around expensive stars.
He is not a luxury for New York. He is part of the reason the roster still has balance when the game turns ugly, and his latest defensive turn only strengthens the case that the Knicks already have one of the league’s better under-the-radar contracts on their hands.
