{"id":709336,"date":"2026-04-13T01:06:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T01:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709336\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T01:06:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T01:06:33","slug":"as-brown-tinkers-with-rotation-knicks-mcbride-shows-hes-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709336\/","title":{"rendered":"As Brown tinkers with rotation, Knicks’ McBride shows he’s ready"},"content":{"rendered":"

The regular season is now over, and Mike Brown now shifts his focus to postseason rotations for a deep playoff push.<\/p>\n

The head coach said last Thursday his potential nine-man postseason rotation \u201cmight change,\u201d but one thing looks certain after Sunday\u2019s season finale loss to the Charlotte Hornets<\/a>: Miles McBride<\/a> looks fully healthy and on track to log serious minutes for Brown\u2019s playoff squad.<\/p>\n

McBride recorded his best game Sunday since returning from a February sports hernia surgery: 21 points, three rebounds, one assist and one steal in 24 minutes.<\/p>\n

His extended minutes came with Brown resting every usual rotational player as the regular season came to an end. Mikal Bridges<\/a> logged just 23 seconds to extend his games played streak while Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart and Mitchell Robinson didn\u2019t get a second of action.<\/p>\n

McBride took advantage of their DNPs, knocking down four three-pointers in the 110-96 loss.<\/p>\n

The game might\u2019ve been meaningless \u2014 but not for McBride, who hadn\u2019t had such a performance following two months of recovery post-core-muscle surgical procedure.<\/p>\n

His return, however, wasn\u2019t seamless.<\/p>\n

The guard tweaked the injury during his first game back against the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> on March 29, but didn\u2019t miss any time afterwards.<\/p>\n

In his five games back, McBride shot 6-for-27 from the field. On Sunday, he turned in an efficient 8-for-15 outing.<\/p>\n

And he did it in just three quarters of action.<\/p>\n

Aside from the Knicks\u2019 starters, Brown noted McBride along with Robinson, Landry Shamet and Jordan Clarkson could fill out the top-9 rotation in the postseason.<\/p>\n

If Sunday was any sort of audition for any out-of-rotation player to get postseason playing time, no one overshadowed McBride \u2014 or anyone in the top-9.<\/p>\n

With Brunson sidelined, Jose Alvarado took over most ballhandling duties while defending Hornets star LaMelo Ball.<\/p>\n

The Brooklyn native logged 16 points, five rebounds and seven assists in 34 minutes of action. The guard knocked down four three-pointers, while shooting 6-of-16 from the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The regular season is now over, and Mike Brown now shifts his focus to postseason rotations for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3777],"tags":[7,684,473,3878,685,304,3357,2715,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-709336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-charlotte-hornets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-charlotte","10":"tag-charlotte-hornets","11":"tag-charlottehornets","12":"tag-hornets","13":"tag-knicks","14":"tag-mike-brown","15":"tag-miles-mcbride","16":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116394721726910472","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}