Miles “Deuce” McBride was golden for the Knicks when they needed him against the Sixers.
Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images
Miles McBride carries his competitive edge not on his sleeve but just below it. A tattoo reading “Golden Child” runs down his left shin, hidden during games by compression leggings. He tells anyone who asks that his family embraced the nickname—his grandmother started it, his parents and sister joined in. But one person doesn’t find it so wholesome: his older brother Trey, a professional basketball player in Australia and Miles’ best friend since birth.
When they were young, Miles followed Trey everywhere. Despite a two-year age gap, Trey included his little brother in pickup games and hangouts. They played fierce one-on-one matches on a backyard court their father built. The first time Miles dunked on anyone was during one of those games—Trey recalls feeling a mix of anger and pride he’d never experienced before.
But Trey can’t support his brother’s trash talk permanently inked into his skin. He insists the tattoo is “a permanent middle finger.” Years ago, Trey ironically nicknamed Miles “The Golden Child” because Miles was the well-behaved one who got away with everything while Trey was the troublemaker. “I would do something, get in trouble. Miles does the same thing, and no one bats an eye,” Trey said. The rest of the family adopted it sincerely, but Trey meant it as a dig.
Then came the bold, dark capital letters down Miles’ leg: GOLDEN CHILD. “I swear to you, he got this as a middle finger to me,” Trey said.
Behind Miles’ easy smile is an edge only his brother claims to see—though on the basketball court, it shows in more obvious ways. Whether he misses 12 straight jump shots or not, the 13th goes up with just as much confidence. Now, as the New York Knicks prepare for their second consecutive conference finals, McBride is a key reason they’re still alive.
McBride led the Knicks in scoring Sunday when they swept the Philadelphia 76ers, posting 25 points on 7-of-9 three-point shooting, including six of seven in the first half. Each time the ball found him, he rose up without hesitation. That confidence developed heading into his third NBA season after inconsistent playing time. “I felt my back was against the wall,” McBride said. “The only way out was to fight and trust myself.”
The Knicks trusted the numbers. Though McBride had hit only 28 percent of his threes early in his career, practice stats told a different story—he was one of the team’s most accurate shooters in drills. Former coach Tom Thibodeau urged him to keep shooting. McBride took it to extremes: Jalen Brunson remembers a young McBride rushing a three and missing, then being told to move the ball—only to launch the same shot the next possession. It went in.
“That’s the confidence he has in himself and what we have in him,” Brunson said.
McBride’s Game 4 performance wasn’t a surprise. He once had a 22-game stretch this season hitting 45 percent of his threes on 7.5 attempts per night. Then a hernia required surgery, and after returning in March, he admitted playing through pain. Still, he kept shooting, drawing defenders out and opening space for the Knicks’ playmakers.
“His ability to stretch the floor and create space is second to none,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said. “He’s got a confidence that takes us to another level.”
The Knicks need that level to continue into the Eastern Conference finals, whether they face the Detroit Pistons or Cleveland Cavaliers—and whether OG Anunoby plays or not. They’ve won seven straight playoff games by a combined 185 points. In Game 4, they hit 11 of their first 12 threes; McBride drained four of those in just 82 seconds.
McBride keeps shooting because he has more edge than his innocent persona suggests. It fuels him to hunt stepbacks, even when his coach tells him to pass. It leads him to gaslight his brother into believing that this notoriously nice guy got the tattoo just to annoy him. Miles has never admitted it—until now.
After the win, McBride was asked whether he got the tattoo purely to mess with Trey. He chuckled, turned his head, grinned, and finally confessed: “Yeah.” For a moment, he seemed proud. Then he shifted into aw-shucks mode: “But a lot of other people have called me that, so it worked out. Shoutout to my sister.”
Trey knew all along. “It’s probably a little true,” he said. “He probably does like the nickname I gave him because things have gone well. But there’s a small piece of him that’s like, ‘Yeah, Trey, take that. I’m the golden child.'”