After a lengthy and mysterious absence to start the season, Mitchell Robinson finally made his debut on Friday night against the Chicago Bulls. The New York Knicks lost, but the dual-big lineup featuring him and Karl-Anthony Towns was a wrecking ball. It’s a pity, then, that head coach Mike Brown won’t be able to use it as often as he’d like for a while—if ever.
Starting Robinson and KAT together is clearly the Knicks’ preference, even if Brown plans to shape-shift lineups and rotations depending on matchups. Opening games typically lends itself to logging a bunch of minutes. People bemoan how it’s more about who closes games, but starting lineups almost always inform the crux of your rotation.
This isn’t going to be the case for New York—not when it comes to Robinson and Towns.
The Knicks just got a taste of what KAT and Robinson can do
New York’s two bigs racked up just over seven minutes together versus Chicago. The Knicks outscored the Bulls by 13 points during that time—no joke considering they ended up losing by 10.
All of the KAT-Mitch reps came alongside fellow starters Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, and OG Anunoby. Small-sample warnings apply, but the Knicks notched a 192.9 offensive rating (seriously) with this group on the court. The flamethrowing was fueled in large part by a 7-of-10 conversion rate on twos, and New York gobbling up 60 percent of its own misses.
These numbers are in no way sustainable. But they are proof of concept. The same goes for the minutes KAT and Mitch logged without one another. Robinson played over 12 minutes without Towns, during which time the Knicks were minus-13. In Towns’ 24-and-a-half minutes without Robinson, New York was minus-6.
People are still wondering why Mike Brown didn’t turn more to this duo as a result. Especially during crunch time. The Bulls relentlessly targeted Towns as the man in the middle, and it worked. They did everything from attacking him directly and drawing fouls, to putting him in space and launching threes, to exploiting his lackluster performance on the defensive glass. Playing Robinson in more of those stretches is seemingly the antidote to so many problems.
If only that were the case.
Mike Brown doesn’t have the luxury of playing KAT and Robinson more
The Knicks made it clear long before Robinson missed the start of the season that they were going to manage his workload. That caution is only going to intensify as he works his way back from an actual ankle issue.
It seems Robinson will be held for around 20 minutes. All of them cannot come next to Towns. The Knicks have 48 center minutes to fill. Tethering Robinson exclusively to KAT leaves them at the mercy of sophomore Ariel Hukporti, or Guerschon Yabusele, who looks absolutely awful to start the season.
This is before considering Towns’ own injury issues. He recently said that he’s playing through a Grade 2 quad strain. If the Knicks don’t give Robinson solo reps at center, it will increase the burden upon KAT’s shoulders over the course of the game. That’s a dicey proposition in a vacuum. It’s downright irresponsible if he’s really battling a Grade 2 quad strain.
Over time, Robinson should be able to rack up more minutes. That will open additional opportunities for him to play alongside KAT. But his body has also betrayed him time and again. It’ll be genuinely shocking if he’s ever consistently a 28-plus-minutes-per-game player this season.
Not every opponent will struggle against the KAT-Robinson look as much as the Bulls, but the Knicks are nevertheless left in a weird position. They know this twosome can work, if not dominate. They just don’t know whether they’ll ever be able to deploy it as a staple.