When the New York Knicks announced that Mitchell Robinson would miss their Sunday night game against the Miami Heat, they may have also revealed when he’ll actually play: at some point over the next two games.
Though the 27-year-old was ruled out for a third straight game—fifth straight, if you count preseason—he reportedly traveled with the team on their current road trip. That isn’t necessarily an attention-grabber, but it’s worth raising eyebrows when you consider the Knicks will only be away from Madison Square for three total games.
After playing in Miami on Sunday, New York heads to Milwaukee on Tuesday, and then Chicago on Friday. If Robinson is with them on this miniature Eastern Conference tour, it suggests that he and the team believe his regular season debut will happen within the next week.
And that, in no uncertain terms, would be a breath of fresh air.
The Mitchell Robinson situation is starting to get weird
The Knicks are so far doing perfectly fine without Robinson in the mix. Head coach Mike Brown has peppered in all sorts of different lineups during his absence. Dual-big units with Ariel Hukporti or Trey Jemison III, last year’s starting five with Josh Hart, the Deuce McBride-plus-starters look, and even OG Anunoby-at-the-5 are all part of the rotation to date.
Still, we can’t pretend Robinson’s absence to start the year is anything other than awkward at best, and ominous at worst. While the Knicks have made it perfectly clear they’re going to load-manage him throughout the season, his ankle started getting managed before the season ever started—and after logging fewer than 45 total minutes during the preseason.
Updates on Robinson’s status have been sparse, and limited exclusively to whether he’ll play or continue sitting out. That is nothing less than unsettling when factoring in his previous injury history, and knowing that New York viewed him as a starter ahead of the regular season.
The latter point immediately comes into question given Robinson’s latest absence. Can they really trust him to be a regular starter given [gesturing wildly] …everything? Brown doesn’t seem concerned with rolling out the same five each game, but a level of continuity is non-negotiable.
This says nothing of the big-picture implications. Robinson is extension-eligible right now, and headed for unrestricted free agency next summer. Missing games and general uncertainty may drive down the cost of retaining him, but it also leaves New York to wonder whether it can reinvest in him at all.
It’s still early, but the Knicks need answers
There is always the possibility that the Knicks are operating with an overabundance of caution. That would be understandable given Robinson’s wild-card health. Over the past five years, out of a possible 400 regular-season games, he has appeared in 210 of them. That comes out to 52.5 percent, which is barely half of the team’s matchups.
Yet, we can’t be expected to know or assume New York is merely treating him with kid gloves, and that there’s nothing to see here. The Knicks haven’t publicly conveyed that message, and Robinson, of all people, doesn’t have the track record warranting the benefit of the doubt.
Fans can only be put at ease once the big man actually takes the floor. And while we still don’t know for sure when that’ll happen, his presence on the current roadtrip heavily implies he’s on the verge of making his regular-season debut—if not against Milwaukee on Tuesday, then in Chicago on Friday.