Knicks were quietly gifted a solution to their Mitchell Robinson dilemma

Hanging onto Mitchell Robinson past the trade deadline doesn’t guarantee he will return to the New York Knicks next season. He could leave in free agency. Technically. In actuality, he won’t leave, because he can’t leave, not after trade-deadline happenings obliterated the league’s available cap space.

Following a frantic flurry of moves, just three teams now project to have spending power this summer that clocks in above the non-taxpayer mid-level exception ($15.1 million), according to Keith Smith of Spotrac. This is a far, far cry from the 10 squads entering this season who were expected to operate with significant cap space. 

For its part, New York should be elated by this development. 

The Knicks can’t afford to lose Mitchell Robinson, and now they won’t have to

Despite Robinson’s health concerns and overall limitations, his name never ambled into the trade-rumor mill. Not really. His offensive-rebounding prowess coupled with more frequent returns to form on the defensive end render him indispensable to this core. 

Short of including him in a pipe-dream trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo, it became clear early the Knicks would let his situation ride out until the offseason, and take their chances in free agency. Traveling this route always profiled as a reasonable, if low-stakes, gamble given Robinson’s checkered health bill. It is now basically a zero-risk play.

The three teams expected to have cap space, per Smith, are the Los Angeles Lakers ($48.2 million), Brooklyn Nets ($45.7 million), and Chicago Bulls ($34.6 million). Brooklyn doesn’t need a center after keeping Nicolas Claxton, and Day’Ron Sharpe. Los Angeles needs an upgrade from Deandre Ayton and Jaxson Hayes, but is widely expected to go big-name hunting. 

Chicago’s center rotation is a meme after trading Nikola Vucevic, but the front office signaled a commitment to rebuilding at the trade deadline. Throwing gobs of money at a soon-to-be 28-year-old with availability questions doesn’t jell with that direction.

A handful of teams will indeed have the non-taxpayer mid-level exception at their disposal. But the center market is pretty deep. Robinson won’t be most suitors’ first choice. Even if he is, the Knicks wouldn’t have held onto him past the trade deadline if they weren’t willing to match that type of money.

Only one obstacle stands between Robinson and a return to the Knicks

New York’s possible entry into the second apron could complicate matters, particularly when both Landry Shamet and Mohamed Diawara (restricted) may have frothier markets and command higher paydays than the team expected. Still, the aforementioned point holds true: None of this is news to the Knicks. If they weren’t prepared to pay into the second apron, or they were scared of paying Robinson up to bigger-MLE money, he wouldn’t be on the roster right now.

If anything, the biggest obstacle to his return is Giannis. 

Extending Robinson before free agency is unlikely, because it’ll be easier for New York to navigate the Antetokounmpo sweepstakes outside the second apron. This presumes that there will even be a Giannis sweepstakes, and that the draft-asset-poor Knicks will feature prominently within it.

Absent that, Robinson’s return isn’t just a strong likelihood. Thanks to the annihilation of cap space at the trade deadline, it’s a virtual certainty, if not an actual, unassailable, stone-cold lock.