Deuce's Worth

Let's take a deeper look at a fan favorite.

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Deuce’s Worth

Today’s question comes to us from Barry Kraver, who asks about a player many thought would be in consideration for a starting spot, but thus far in camp seems relegated to a reserve role once again:

What can you share that backs up how good a value Deuce McBride’s contract is?

What value do you think Deuce gives? What trade return do you think is fair for him?

Barry’s question falls right in middle of my wheelhouse. I love nothing more than analyzing NBA contracts and trying to peg their value, especially ones as nuanced and multi-layered as McBride’s

(I’m sure this will come as a shock to many of you, but I was a massive nerd throughout most of my schooling life. As proof, I’m pretty sure my mom still has my eighth grade math award somewhere in her possession.)

The first layer has to do with what McBride is as a player, which is still a bit unclear on two major fronts. First, is he capable of leading an offense - even a backup unit - as the point guard, and second, just how versatile is he defensively and how high is his ceiling on that end of the court?

The best thing Deuce has going for him is his perception as a multipositional player who can play alongside a starting point guard one minute and take his place the next. This is accurate to an extent, but there’s a reason these questions continue to dog him. The fact is that he hasn’t been a shutdown defender at the point of attack, like say a Dyson Daniels or Lu Dort, nor have we seen him consistently guard up a position, like Alex Caruso or prime Marcus Smart.

On offense, the proceedings tend to stagnate when he runs the show. It’s no coincidence that the team drafted Tyler Kolek last June and immediately handed him the richest contract ever given to a second rounder, nor is it an accident that Malcolm Brogdon is in camp and is reportedly a lock not only to make the team, but potentially the rotation as well.

Looking around the league, guards who don’t create offense and don’t regularly switch onto wings don’t really get paid. Isaiah Joe got a 4-year, $48 million deal with OKC last summer and he isn’t as strong a defender as Deuce, but he’s 6'5" and one of the league’s dead-eye shooters. Davion Mitchell just got two years and $24 million from Miami, but his defensive acumen is a step up from Deuce and he hit 45 percent from deep in 30 games with the Heat last season, 15 of which he started at point guard. Kris Dunn only managed to get $16.2 million from the Clippers last summer, and he’s viewed as an All-Defense caliber player, albeit one with a questionable shot.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have TJ McConnell, who last summer inked a four-year, $45 million extension with Indy. McConnell is sort of a one-of-one type of player, but is viewed as perhaps the league’s best true backup point guard and has arguably outplayed McBride over the last two years in the postseason.

On top of all this, while we may have suspected that Tom Thibodeau’s falling out with the front office was partly due to his reluctance to start McBride, the early camp photos would seem to indicate that only Mitchell Robinson and Josh Hart are under serious consideration for that fifth spot.

This brings us to the second layer of the McBride discussion: the difference between his value to the Knicks versus his value on the open market. Before we get into that, I’ll mention the excellent piece Stefan Bondy wrote last December in which he spoke to two agents, a former executive and a current executive about what McBride is actually worth, with Bondy noting that the median response was “in the $10 million-12 million average annual salary range.¹”

Notably, that’s just below what the full (i.e., non-taxpayer) midlevel exception was at the time, which I view as something of a barometer in the league. For context, this summer two players received almost the entire NTP-MLE: Caris LeVert from the Pistons and Dorian Finney-Smith from the Rockets. DFS is your classic 3 & D wing while LeVert has a bit more on ball gravity in exchange for shooting consistency and defense. Notably, they are 6'6" and 6'7", respectively.

Given what those two players got, I’d say that Bondy’s sample size provided an accurate representation of McBride’s value on the open market. The one counter to that would be that Deuce just turned 25 while those guys are both north of 31.

But that only matters if we expect continued improvement from McBride as he hits the back half of his 20’s, which brings us back to the first topic. Either way, the six players seemingly ahead of McBride on New York’s depth chart all make at least $13 million, and with the exception of Mitch, are all in the $20 million range or higher.

For that reason alone, you’d think having a key rotation player who makes a little more than the vet minimum counts as the steal of a lifetime. Then again, it’s hard to know at this point whether McBride’s role is going to be significantly more expansive than that of Jordan Clarkson or even Malcolm Brogdon, both of whom make a little more than half of McBride’s salary. Further complicating the internal valuation question is a big unknown: where does Deuce peg his fair market value as he’s creeping very close to his extension eligibility (as I wrote about more here)? If it’s more than the Knicks are willing to pay, that’s a significant complicating factor.

Regardless of how much importance the Knicks actually put on McBride at his current salary, it’s hard to see some other team valuing him to the point of giving up a significant asset. On this front, I found it instructive when Zach Lowe recently referenced a league exec who floated the idea of a Deuce-for-Tari Eason swap. Like McBride, Eason is somewhere in the 6-to-8 range of Houston’s healthy rotation, but is 6'8" with All-Defense level tools. That’s probably why Lowe said he wouldn’t do a swap if he were Houston, even if New York threw in some draft assets.

Again, we come back to this idea of McBride’s ceiling. Being a jack of all trades, master of none simply has more value when you’re a 6'6" wing like Mikal Bridges than when you’re a 6'2" guard like McBride.

At the end of the day, while teams around the league would certainly be interested in getting a $4 million player who should probably be paid somewhere in the $10-12 million range annually, I’m not sure any team would be willing to give up something like an unprotected or even a lightly protected first in exchange for his services.

Which is why I’ve consistently said that McBride has more value to the Knicks than he does in a trade, even if they don’t view him as the ideal fifth starter who can unlock 5-out offense at one end and consistency guard the point of attack at the other. To me, the only trade that makes sense would be one that accomplishes New York’s current cap/apron goals (i.e., shaving about a million bucks from their cap sheet) and nets them a player who makes a bit more sense for a roster heavy on guards and bigs but short on wings.

For that reason, Eason does make some sense, even if there might be some questions about how he’d fit in a Mike Brown offense² and the Knicks would almost certainly need to include some draft assets to make the trade palatable to Houston. Outside of him, it’s hard to find a low salaried player who would be attainable without adding too much to the pot. That gets us into other, more complicated trades that feature other players for salary-building purposes. This close to the start of the season, I just don’t see that happening.

So to answer your question Barry, I’d bet that McBride sticks around this season, even if I wouldn’t bet much. That’s probably good news. He’s saying all the right things and seems genuinely excited for a new opportunity under a different head coach. If he ever does get that shot at a bigger role and nails it, that could propel his standing around the league to a new level.

For a guy who’s been nothing but a positively impactful player for years now, that’s an outcome we should all be rooting for.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1. There were three specific responses mentioned: $9-12 million from one interviewee, “in the $6 million range” from another, and $10-12 million from another.

2. The Knicks would need to dump a Kolek or Dadiet into a third team’s cap exception for this team to make sense for all parties.