Knicks amazed (again) by Mitchell Robinson's prowess on offensive boards
Knicks center Mitchell Robinson pulls down a rebound over Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert in the first half at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
In the final minutes of the fourth quarter Wednesday night, just before Mike Brown cleared the bench in the Knicks' 137-114 victory, Mitchell Robinson bullied his way through the paint against Minnesota’s Naz Reid and Julius Randle, grabbed his ninth offensive rebound and fired it out to OG Anunoby for an open three-point field-goal attempt. Before the shot even left Anunoby’s fingertips, Robinson was headed to the other end of the floor, his mission accomplished. He was as confident the shot was falling as Steph Curry would have been.
It’s certainly a different skill set from the ones featured by Curry and any of the NBA’s other scoring stars, but Robinson is and has been as good at his particular skill as any player in the NBA. On Wednesday, he grabbed an astounding nine offensive rebounds in 16 minutes and 12 seconds of action.
“I knew before I got here that Mitch was special, and just seeing him every night, it’s amazing,” Anunoby said. “No one can do what he does. He impacts the game in ways that no one else can do. Blocking shots. Just everything he does. He’s amazing defensively, and he helps our team a lot.”
“He’s Mitchell Robinson. He’s a beast,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “When he steps on the floor, he impacts the game. I think the whole world knows that, but everyone who is locked in surely knows that.”
The issue isn’t what Robinson can do but when he can do it, and that is an ongoing mystery.
Plagued by injuries throughout his career, he sat out the first 58 games last season. The Knicks insisted it was to ensure that his left ankle problems finally would be behind him after two surgical procedures in a five-month period.
This season, they have said there has been no injury or setback, but after playing in the first three preseason games, he was shut down — actually at halftime of the third exhibition game — and then sat out the first four games of the regular season. He returned for two games and then sat out the second night of a back-to-back set.
Any question about the plan for him is pushed aside as simply in the hands of the medical staff, and we all are asked to trust the process.
Then you see nights like Wednesday and understand why — why the Knicks are willing to wait and hope and pray, fingers crossed, that when the playoffs arrive, Robinson will be on the court without a minutes restriction or a ramp-up or a fear that any moment might send him back into the sports medicine folks' hands.
The Knicks have taken big risks in recent seasons, pulling off trades for Towns, Anunoby and Mikal Bridges from a team that already was ascending to contender status, then firing Tom Thibodeau, the coach who brought them to last season's Eastern Conference finals.
Robinson, the longest-tenured member of the Knicks, has never been part of a trade, but relying on him to be a big part of what they are chasing might be as risky as any of the moves they’ve made.
He'll be an unrestricted free agent at season’s end. It’s understandable why the Knicks might be hesitant to invest in a new deal with his injury history, but it's also understandable why he is a valuable component.
Brown is new and has been thrust into the role of talking his way around the questions and limitations, but he also has seen what Robinson can do for him.
“I thought Mitch had, like, nine blocks or 10 blocks,” he said after the game. “I was shocked he only had three. But Mitch was all over the place. He was guarding everybody, contesting shots, blocking shots. And then I wanna take a poll — who has seen a stat sheet that has somebody playing 16 minutes and get nine offensive rebounds? Raise your hands. I like that. Yes. That was absolutely amazing.”
“He’s just nonstop mode,” said Randle, who used to enjoy playing beside Robinson and now was trying to slow him down. “That’s just what he does. You know that he’s really good at it. Over the years, he’s learned it and just locked in on it more and more. That’s probably where he makes his biggest impact.”
If all of the observers were in awe of what Robinson had done, the one person who seemed unimpressed was Robinson himself.
“This is nothing new,” he said. “It isn’t my first rodeo.”
That's an interesting choice of words, given that he is the one southern cowboy in New York. Sometimes he might seem out of place, but if the Knicks are really going to be title contenders, they need all of the pieces — and Robinson showed Wednesday why he is one of those key pieces.
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
