Deuce McBride spent this year’s championship run looking like his usual self on tape, with quick hands and reliable shooting.
What the box score never showed was how much pain he was actually playing through behind the scenes.
McBride had missed close to two months earlier in the season after undergoing surgery for a sports hernia, a core muscle injury that sidelined him from late January until just before the playoffs began. He came back sooner than most expected, and it turns out that comeback was far from complete.
Deuce McBride Gets Real About Playing Hurt
Speaking on The Crew Has It, McBride did not sugarcoat where his body actually stood once the postseason tipped off.
“I mean, I just, I just never counted this out. Like I knew we had so many weapons and I mean, honestly, like the whole finals, like we never played great. Like we never just had a great game, you know, like a lot of guys were dealing with this stuff, you know, JB just had his, his hand, you know, I had surgery.”
–– Deuce McBride on coming back a few weeks before the playoffs after ~2 months out with sports hernia surgery
The picture he paints is of a team held together by grit more than health.
“So I’m coming back and I’m probably 50% healthy, you know, playing through the playoffs and like, but I just, we just had so much grit in us. And we didn’t care who got the credit, you know what I mean? Like, so I just felt like it was, as long as we keep it close, we got the guys we need to win a game at the end of the game at the end of the day.”
What Comes Next for McBride and the Knicks
The uncertainty around his own health mirrors a bigger uncertainty hanging over McBride heading into this season, his contract. He is entering the final year of his deal at just under four million dollars, and an extension has not come together so far.
The Knicks have stayed quiet on locking him up long term, and that silence has fueled steady trade chatter through the summer. Reports have named him among the team’s more movable pieces given his affordable deal and the roster’s rising costs elsewhere.
Still, McBride was one of the most efficient players on a title team, and his defense and shooting are not easy to replace. Whether New York keeps him past this season or uses him to reshape the roster remains one of the bigger questions hanging over the defending champions.
McBride played through more than fans realized to help the Knicks win it all. Now his future in New York carries a different kind of uncertainty, one that will play out over the next several months as the front office weighs what to do with him.
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