Toppin and Robinson: How does this nostalgic frontcourt duo fit on the Knicks?
Could the Knicks have their chance at redemption for the ultimately failed Amar’e Stoudemire-Tyson Chandler pairing with their new Obi Toppin-Mitchell Robinson duo? Jack Huntley examines.
Anyone else get the feeling, pondering the gravity-shattering possibilities of Mitchell Robinson and Obi Toppin sharing frontcourt airspace, that we’ve been here before? A faint and foggy deja-vu. A positional post-it note pinned to the memory of such an extreme meshing of offensive and defensive specialties. Surely there is more than a whiff of nostalgia here, back to the days of Tyson Chandler and Amar’e Stoudemire, a partnership that threatened two-way fast-twitch domination, but in the end never quite got the chance to click?
Stoudemire and Chandler spent three seasons together in New York. For Amar’e, his best year as a Knick was his first, 2010-11, where he averaged 25 points and eight rebounds, played all but four games, and made the All-Star team. Tyson signed in the subsequent offseason, in time for the lockout-truncated 2011-12 season, in which the big man won Defensive Player of the Year. He followed this up in 2012-13 with an All-Star nod, the only one of his career, as he anchored the best Knick team this century to 54 regular-season wins and the second round of the playoffs. The duo played well at times, individually, but never together.
STAT played his best ball before Chandler arrived, and Chandler his best ball while Amare was out injured. Of a possible 230 regular season games, they played together 111 times, logging only 1825 shared minutes over three seasons. Even in those minutes, the fit was further complicated by the presence of Carmelo Anthony, who occupied some of the same real estate as Amar’e and wasn’t the type to run 50 pick-and-rolls a game, which is what both STAT and Chandler needed to really pop offensively. For rim-rolling specialists who need the table set in order to eat, Melo was always the assassin they were stuck with rather than the general they needed: always deadly, always compelling, always with an artist’s flair for the moment, but still, at heart, an assassin.
This sense of nostalgia, then, is one of hope. It’s nostalgia for the idea of pairing an elite defensive big with an elite rim-rolling big. A two-headed — one plus one equals two-way — monster. The idea of on-court fit founded on complementary weaknesses is unconventional now, as it was in 2011. There is an argument that the ceiling on both ends of the floor is ultimately dragged down by an alignment with such a neat dovetailing of flaws and by the covering up of weaknesses rather than the accentuation of strengths; neither player can fully flex their talents. Maybe this is true, but its opposite is equally true: you’ll never have an abysmal defense with prime Chandler manning the middle, and you’ll never have an atrocious offense with peak Amar’e wreaking havoc on the other end.
The floor has been raised, then, by pairing Robinson with Toppin, even if the eventual ceiling has come down some. This conservative endgame on the court mirrors Leon Rose and the Knicks’ philosophy on draft night. Taking Toppin with the No. 8 pick is a bet on quick and bankable on-court contributions from the 22-year-old collegiate player of the year, a bet on one of the least likely lottery picks to bust, and a bet on untapped shooting potential to further offset his defensive limitations.
It’s a faint and blurry and slightly bruised nostalgia. We never had the neophyte versions of Chandler and Stoudemire, who, in their primes, both relied on cartoon athleticism to envelop and obliterate less bouncy opponents. Obi and Mitch are fresh Play-Doh. Straight out of the box. Malleable and full of possibility. Still bathing in the cartilage preserving waters of the fountain of fast-twitch youth. It may not translate to immediate winning, but these two are going to be murder to play against for opposing front courts. Running and jumping may only take up half a line on the scouting report, but no other big-big twosome in the league have the raw straight line horizontal and vertical force of Toppin and Robinson.
And so, of course, as always, we get to the crux of the intrigue of this bouncy berserker frontcourt, and really all Knicks intrigue, at all times, ever: the Point Guard Thing. “Knicks,” “point,” and “guard” are three words carved deep into the walls of New York fans’ souls, the essence around which our collective blue and orange double-helix coils. How best should the Knicks weaponize their shiny new gravity-defying front court? I think you know — have always known — the answer.
The calculation, the roadmap, and the recipe for Rose going forward is to find, by hook or by crook, elite playmaking to pair with two elite play finishers. Whether that’s a traditional point guard or a new age point-wing, in the draft or in free agency or under the sofa; finding this table setting engine remains the holy grail and evergreen missing piece.
Until the Knicks land their elusive on court general, their Master in Chief on the sidelines Tom Thibodeau will have to make do with a roster lacking a clear-cut star to orbit. He has a mish-mash of ingredients: a little spacing here, a little playmaking there, a little defense somewhere in the middle. It will be fascinating to see how Thibs puts it all together in a season shaping up to be devoid of any real expectations. Losing competently is about where the bar sits for Thibs in his debut season at the Garden.
It has been a popular cautionary caveat, in the last week, to label any Obi-Amar’e comparison as lazy. This is true, to the extent that all comparisons are at their core - fundamentally lazy. They are not scientific studies of exact likeness, but easily communicated and digestible bitesize surface descriptors of players loudest traits. In this case, two similarly built wrecking balls dipped in nuclear material who dunk the ball a lot, and have soft defensive underbellies. Toppin, maybe because he exists in an epoch of peak NBA spacing, and maybe because he was a backup point guard in high school, has the tools to develop reliable perimeter creation skills that Amare never could, or even needed to. Their similarities jump off the page, but don’t preclude the existence and development of potentially significant differences, when all is said and done.
The Stoudemire-Chandler duo was a bittersweet one. Hopefully this version — Robi 2.0 — with Toppin and Robinson will wipe away the slightly bitter aftertaste of last decades’ theoretical dream frontcourt. The Knicks, in a way, are digging a dusty old recipe out of the corner of the kitchen cupboard, and although the fundamental ingredients are similar, Leon Rose would do well to make some adjustments. Last time the quantities were a little off, the temperature on the oven a little high, a key ingredient noticeably absent. Heading into the 2020-21 season and beyond, if the Knicks get it right, this high-flying frontcourt could really cook — transforming squinting nostalgia into wide-eyed euphoria.
