If the Knicks are going to cash in Miles McBride, the cleanest return might come from a player they already know well: Jericho Sims.
McBride has earned his place in New York. In his rookie season, the Knicks were a losing team.
The next year, they jumped by 10 wins and got to the second round. In year three, they reached 50 wins.
In year four, they made their first conference finals in 25 years. And last season, he helped them win their first title in 53.
That kind of run makes it easy to understand why he’s become such a favorite. Knicks fans have turned the “Deuce!”
chant into a staple whenever he lets it fly from deep, home or away. He’s developed into a reliable defender and a floor spacer, the sort of player who looks like he should be making far more than he is.
But the reality is that his current deal - three years, $13 million signed in 2023 - is almost over, and he’s headed toward unrestricted free agency next summer. New York may never be the place where he gets paid what he’s worth.
The problem is that McBride’s value to the roster may be greater in a trade than in a reserve role. Last season he posted career highs in points per game, made threes and three-point percentage, where he hit 41.3%.
The more telling number now is his 26.3 minutes per game. Even with all that progress, the Knicks simply don’t have much room to give him more.
They’re carrying nine guards right now, or 10 if you count Josh Hart, who covers basically every position. Seven backcourt players were regular pieces in last year’s playoffs: Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, Hart, McBride, Landry Shamet, Jose Alvarado and Jordan Clarkson.
All of them are back in 2027, and the team has also added Bruce Brown, Ochai Agbaji and John Konchar. That’s a crowded picture, and it doesn’t point toward a bigger role for McBride.
Milwaukee, meanwhile, has a very different situation after a decade of winning and then moving on from Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Bucks are in the early stages of a rebuild, but their backcourt still has enough uncertainty that nothing is locked in.
Brayden Burries is a promising rookie, though he’s still a rookie. Kevin Porter Jr. is coming off arthroscopic knee surgery.
Gary Trent Jr. is under scrutiny as the league investigates what looks a lot like cap circumvention after he signed for about 20 times what any other team would have paid him.
That’s where McBride starts to make sense. He’s a pro, he defends, and he’s already shown he can win.
If Milwaukee needs defense and late-game shooting on nights when it’s competitive, he could fit with Tyler Herro or even take his place. If the role grows, the production could too, and that might even make him movable again before the season is over.
The Knicks, though, would be getting something more certain in return. Jericho Sims has spent most of four seasons behind Mitchell Robinson, Nerlens Noel, Isaiah Hartenstein and Karl-Anthony Towns.
He’s 6-foot-10 and 250 pounds, a sturdy rebounder who keeps things simple. Like Robinson, he doesn’t try to do too much.
He takes the shots he can make, and those are basically dunks. Not flashy, but efficient when used in small doses.
Sims is familiar to the organization and the locker room, and he’s the kind of emergency big who can be plugged in when needed. Given how closely his skill set lines up with Robinson’s, he might even be able to play alongside Towns at times. And for a Knicks team that always has to count every dollar, his contract matters: he makes about a million dollars less than McBride.
There’s a neat symmetry here, too, since both players came into the league as second-round picks in 2022. For Milwaukee, it would be the swingier move, because McBride has more upside even as both players are on expiring deals.
For New York, it would be less about sentiment and more about roster math. McBride is a beloved part of the Knicks’ story, but if the front office is focused on balance, a McBride-for-Sims swap makes sense for everyone involved.
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