Mitchell Robinson and the Knicks’ 7-foot, 240-pound hole in the middle
The Knicks have particular needs. Mitchell Robinson has particular skills. See where this is going?
Three current Knicks have been the difference-maker in a postseason series.
Karl-Anthony Towns stepped up last season for Minnesota against Phoenix and Denver, shooting 52 percent from the floor and 44 percent from deep as the Wolves won only their third and fourth playoff series ever. Three years ago, Jalen Brunson went from Dallas’ third banana to its first star, leading the Mavs past Donovan Mitchell’s Utah Jazz. Not surprisingly, Towns is now the highest-paid Knick of all-time; the only reason Brunson isn’t is because he, unlike Carmelo Anthony, put his money where his mouth when it came to wins versus wages.
The third Knick? That’d be their sixth-highest paid player, and longest-tenured. Mitchell Robinson, the crown jewel acquired in the Melo trade with Oklahoma City two years before the fake president’s real putsch, was drafted a month before David Fizdale was hired, and you’d be forgiven if your main takeaway from his time here has been a hunger for more. Robinson played fewer minutes that season than Damyean Dotson, Noah Vonleh and Emmanual Mudiay. In the past 12 months Mitch has played 270 minutes, or 30 more than Landry Shamet, a man whose first game for New York came two days before Christmas.
Spoiler: the Knicks need Mitchell Robinson more than Landry Shamet.
That’s not news: they’ve “needed” him for the better part of a decade. And yet whenever he’s missed significant time, the Knicks have not only held the fort, they flourished. In Tom Thibodeau’s first year at the helm, New York was 12-15 when Mitch fractured his hand in Washington. They went 29-16 the rest of the way with Nerlens Noel and Taj Gibson as their primary pivots. Last year the Knicks were 12-9 when Mitch fractured his left ankle, then went 31-19 in his absence. We’re two-thirds through this season and New York is 36-18 without him. That means in nearly two seasons worth of games Robinson’s missed under Thibs, the Knicks have played to a 53-win pace. That might lead one to infer Mitch doesn’t have a big role to play with this team. That would be a mistake.
There are no small parts, only small actors – and at 7-foot, 240 pounds, Mitch will never be small. There may be fewer minutes available to him than in recent years, but the impact he could have on this franchise, this season and its history couldn’t be greater. The Knicks don’t need him to be an All-Star. They don’t need 30 minutes a game from him. All the Knicks need Mitchell Robinson to be is Mitchell Robinson. It’s the part he was born to play.
The playoffs are about optionality: the more answers you can throw at teams, the better your chances of advancing. That’s how a team like Boston can win a title despite missing their starting center for most of the postseason: Kristaps Porziņģis may be a unicorn, but strap a horn on Al Horford’s big, beautiful bald head and there’s enough defense and shooting there to spare the Celtics any concessions that’d limit their options or alter their approach. The Knicks added a unicorn of their own, in Towns, a big reason why they now stand head and shoulders above 26 of the 29 other teams. But you don’t get a banner for being the fourth-best team in the Association.
Stop me if you’re heard this before, but the Knicks are 0-5 against the Association’s three superpowers: Boston, Cleveland and Oklahoma City. In some ways, that axis of evil takes three wildly different approaches toward success. The Cavaliers are an offensive powerhouse. The Thunder defend better than the Russians in 1943 at Kursk. The Celtics, even while sleepwalking through the season before they invariably reach for a switch to flip, are a team-wide two-way terror. The three differ in terms of recent successes as well, with Boston the defending champs, Cleveland nearly throwing themselves a parade last year for finally winning a series sans LeBron and OKC’s sweep of the Zion-less Pelicans their lone playoff series win since before the Kevin Durant/Russell Westbrook Cupcake War.
But the big boys share one thing in common, and that is that they’re big. KP can play alongside the 6-foot-10 Jayson Tatum or fellow center Horford. The Thunder have Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren as their starting bigs. The Cavs also go twin towers with Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley. Meanwhile, the only Knick besides KAT taller than 6-foot-8 to play more than 150 minutes this year is Ariel Hukporti. And we love Ariel Hukporti. But . . . no.
The good news is the Knicks don’t need a savior, at least not in the classical sense. The offense is literally the best we’ve seen at MSG since the 1970s. I imagine Thibodeau isn’t thrilled with a defensive rating near bottom third of the league, but that’s par for the course since he arrived; the past four seasons saw the Knicks rank third, 11th, 19th and 10th. They don’t need Mitch to be a DPOY-level player, but if he helps shut down a handful of possessions one night, that could be all the difference in a playoff series.
And let’s not gloss over the offense without consideration for Robinson’s potential impact; after all, what the Knicks do over 82 games when half their opposition aren’t even playoff teams doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when it’s May and they’re facing a gauntlet of 60- to 70-win teams. Despite all Brunson’s heroics to the contrary the past few postseasons, players typically shoot less efficiently when really good teams have weeks to gameplan for them. Towns was brilliant last year for the Wolves, but before then he was their Julius Randle: a valued regular-season contributor whose playoff performances left some let down. The three years before this, the Knicks ranked fourth, third and first in offensive rebounds. This year they’re 18th. If Mitch can just turn around a couple of possessions per game on that end, it could mean everything over a seven-game series.
Most of Robinson’s career to this point has been a pleasant surprise. Remember: he was a second-round pick who didn’t play in college, withdrawing from both Western Kentucky after two weeks of practice and from the NBA draft combine. He tried to block every shot under the sun his first few years, leading to an insane foul rate that left the likes of Kurt Thomas blushing. He fired his agent. He fired his next agent. He fired he next agent. He fired . . . well, you get the point. He’s struggled through multiple lower-body injuries.
And yet at the end of the day, he’s been the most impactful Knicks center since Patrick Ewing, and one of their most prominent post-Willis Reed. A lot of fans – and I’ll raise my hand as one of them – were ready to move on from him after 2021. There wasn’t a soul in the city who would have kept him over Hartenstein after last season, given the choice. We’re all familiar with his limitations. The free throws. The lack of a post game. The lack of any scoring chops outside of dunking. The gripes that slip out through occasional, abstruse social media posts.
But don’t lose sight of his impact against the Cavs in 2023, when in a matchup against two All-Star centers Robinson was head and shoulders the best big in the series. Don’t forget Philadelphia last year, particularly before Joel Embiid assaulted him. The Knicks return to action the next twentysomething games with OG Anunoby working back from a foot sprain and Josh Hart missing at least tonight’s game with jumper’s knee. There is value there for both sides: the Knicks need depth and Robinson needs a runway of game time to ramp up his minutes and conditioning heading into the playoffs.
After the better part of a decade spent dreaming together, the Knicks and MItchell Robinson find themselves in the same boat. They need him to be him. It’s the part he was born to play. If he exceeds expectations – which wouldn’t be the first time he has, or the second, or the third – the sky is the limit. For the Knicks this season, and for Robinson’s legacy in New York.
