Throughout his eight-year career with the New York Knicks, Mitchell Robinson built up the unfortunate reputation of being rather injury-prone and frequently unavailable. During his tenure, the big man missed over 40.0 percent of his games.
On top of serious financial restrictions, this lack of availability presumably played a role in Leon Rose's decision not to re-up with his services this summer, which, in turn, led him to depart for the club's long-time rival, the Boston Celtics, on a three-year, $47.39 million deal.
In his place, the Knicks went about and added veteran Andre Drummond to serve as the direct understudy to star Karl-Anthony Towns. While he may not be a seamless replacement option for Mitch, from their uncanny ability to pull down second-chance opportunities and set hard screens, in many ways their playstyles do somewhat overlap.
Unfortunately, it seems that so too does their checkered track record of staying available on the floor, as Drummond has struggled in this department during the latter half of his soon-to-be 13-year career.
Knicks may want to prepare for Andre Drummond availability issues
To kick off his pro career, Drummond seemed to be an Iron Man of sorts, as he logged 80 or more games in four of his first five years and missed a total of 28 regular-season outings throughout his first seven.
Since then, the absences have only piled up.
Dating back to the 2019-20 season, Drummond has played fewer than 60 games three times and has logged north of 63 just twice.
Now, granted, along the way, there have been some built-in hardships when it comes to game count, specifically the two COVID-19-shortened seasons to kick off the 2020s.
However, even with this qualifier in place, we're still talking about an average of nearly 20 games missed per season, which is far from a desirable number.
Despite these availability issues, the pick-up of Drummond was certainly a no-brainer following the departure of Robinson. After all, adding a 33-year-old two-time All-Star who averages 12.1 points, 11.9 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks for his career on a meager one-year, $3.8 million deal is an incredibly strategic, low-cost approach to filling out New York's vacancy at backup center.
Of course, because of these issues, it's imperative for the Knicks to continue looking for more positional insurance policies to fill out their depth behind both him and KAT.
Fortunately, based on reporting from in-the-know individuals, the front office has a clear aim of doing just that heading into 2026-27.
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