Cincinnati native and New York Knicks guard Miles McBride is now an NBA champion. McBride, 25, is a 2019 graduate of Moeller High School in Sycamore Township, where he first learned to hone his skills on the school’s gym basketball court.
Local Roots
While with the Crusaders, McBride was one of the team’s standout players, helping Moeller to become Division I state champions in back-to-back years in 2018 and 2019, including an undefeated 29-0 regular season record in his senior year.
Upon graduating from Moeller, he would then go on to enroll at the University of West Virginia as a three-star high school basketball recruit, spending two seasons with the Mountaineers. In Morgantown, McBride would help lead West Virginia to back-to-back winning seasons, with the team qualifying for the NCAA Tournament as a No. 3 seed in 2021.
NBA Career
Afterward, his professional career would take off after he was drafted by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2021 NBA Draft. His time on the Thunder would prove to be cut short, however, with McBride traded to the Knicks on the same day that he was drafted. He has remained in New York ever since, finishing his fifth season as an NBA champion on Saturday.
McBride’s role in the team’s successful championship run has proved critical: He averaged 12 points per game in the NBA regular season this year, making him one of the team’s top scorers throughout the 2025-26 season.
A month later on Saturday, the Knicks took the series in five games against the San Antonio Spurs before a full, celebrity-adorned crowd in Texas. Afterward, McBride spoke with NBC New York about what it means for him to win his first NBA championship at just 25 years old.
"I don’t know when it will (set in)," McBride said. "I mean, I think about so much. All glory to God. The support from my family, my friends. I mean the fanbase that showed up here that has our back in New York. I mean, it’s a culmination of all of it."
McBride was then asked about whether the bond that he has with his teammates factored into what made the team’s championship win so special.
"Absolutely," McBride said. "I mean, a bunch of people thought we were too nice, too much of good guys. But that’s what good guys do. I want to be a good guy. I mean, we had a close-knit organization top to bottom. We believed in each other in the darkest moments. Nobody panicked. Nobody was rattled. We just pulled each other out of it."
Original reporting: WLWT Cincinnati — read the source article.
