Knicks' Mike Brown played expert hand with Deuce McBride lineup choice

Winning is fun. Obviously, it’s a lot more enjoyable to watch the Knicks go on a seven-game winning streak than to see them drop four in a row.

Yet coach Mike Brown believes he learned more about his Knicks during their recent 0-4 stretch than he did at any other time this season.

After the Knicks (24-13) ended the losing streak with a 123-111 win over the Clippers on Wednesday night, Brown said he thinks his team ultimately will be better for going through what they did during those eight days.

“I hope no one takes this the wrong way . . . but I embrace it,” Brown said of the adversity his team faced this past week. “When you go through what we’ve gone through, nobody wants to lose, but it helps us be better. It helps me be better.”

The Knicks also learned something about their coach during the past week. Brown, most notably, showed an ability to be flexible and try something different in order to shake things up and strengthen a defense that has pretty much done a nosedive since Josh Hart was injured on Christmas Day.

In a seven-game stretch heading into Wednesday, the Knicks had held only one team, Atlanta, to fewer than 121 points and had twice given up 130 or more.

Brown’s decision to start Deuce McBride alongside Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns gave the Knicks some much-needed toughness on both ends of the floor.

McBride had 16 points, four assists, one steal and one block. The 6-2 guard also made things tough for 6-5 James Harden despite the fact that Harden had a significant size advantage. Harden scored 23 points but shot 6-for-17.

“He’s an extremely good on-ball defender — especially when it comes to the pick-and-roll game,” Brown said. “He’s strong, he’s powerful, he’s quick and he’s athletic and he’s a little longer than what you think, so when that screen comes, he knows you run towards the ball, get your shoulder and hip over that screen at the same time as the ball. He did a fantastic job with that.”

McBride said he leaned into the assignment, and joked that he has the bruises to prove it.

“I know I can be one of the best point-of-attack defenders in the NBA,” McBride said. “I believe in myself. I believe guarding really gets us going and gets us going in transition, which we did throughout the second half, which is really big for us.”

McBride has made a strong bid to stay in the starting lineup until Hart gets back from his ankle injury. In addition to his defensive play, he’s helped the offense by spreading the floor with his outside shooting. He was 4-for-11 from three-point range against the Clippers, forcing them to extend their defense whenever he had the ball.

“He has to be guarded. You watched during the course of the game, they had Kawhi Leonard on him,” Brown said of one of the league’s best defenders. “Who would have thunk, with OG and Mikal and some of these other guys on the floor, Kawhi is matched up with Deuce? It’s because he can shoot.”

After a recent hot stretch, McBride is ranked seventh in the league in three-point shooting percentage, having made 45.3% of his attempts in 26 games. In his last three games, he has shot 14-for-24 (58.3%) from beyond the arc.

“He plays great,” Jalen Brunson said. “Whatever is asked of him, he provides and he produces. That’s just who he is as a player and a person.”

The key now is for the Knicks to build on that win as they open a four-game western trip Friday night in Phoenix against a Suns team that has won seven of its last nine.

“We had a losing streak. I think for us, we have to move on from there,” Brunson said. “We’re going to learn from it. We’re going to learn to get better from it and find ways to win and get better.”

By Barbara Barker

barbara.barker@newsday.commeanbarb

Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.