Oh BlockNessMonster my BlockNessMonster, go forth and get thy bag.
Mitchell Robinson has been a favorite Knick of mine since he was selected by the team with the 36th pick in the 2018 NBA Draft (3 picks after a certain guard from Villanova went to the Dallas Mavericks, and 27 picks after a certain wing/where-we-droppin’ guy from Kentucky was also selected by the Knicks).1 From his early days of blocking three pointers and haphazardly fouling everyone on the court to his 2023 playoff drubbing of the Cleveland Cavaliers through pure offensive rebounding grit, Mitch was a 7-foot-tall beacon of positivity and basketball upside within the general malaise that mired Knicks basketball in the post-Porzingis, pre-Brunson era.
Those were the days of scouring box scores and Reddit threads to see how many points Frank Ntilikina scored (often, none) and how many shots Mitch swatted (2.4 a game, second in the NBA that year to only Myles Turner). Those were the days of Zion-KD-Kyrie hype videos, of huffing hopium about David Fizdale’s superstar-friendly coaching style (which turned out to just be apathy). But, most importantly, those were the days of losing, losing, and losing some more.
Eight years of steady, but not linearly upward, progress later, the New York Knickerbockers are Champions of the World and Mitchell Robinson is the only remaining vestige of that Knicks era into which his career was birthed. This year, Mitch played 13.9 minutes per game in the playoffs, good for ninth most on the team, scoring 4.8 points, hauling in 5.5 rebounds (2.6 offensive), and blocking 0.6 shots.2 He shot a dreadful, miserable, horrible, no good, very bad 29% from the free throw line, effectively rendering him unplayable for large swathes of games, and he mysteriously suffered a ‘boxer’s fracture’ on his right hand in the days between the Conference Finals and NBA Finals.
Ok, so not the world’s best playoffs for Mitch – that’s fine, it happens to everyone. He still had some big time moments in big time games, including grabbing the possibly-series clinching offensive rebound after a Josh Hart free throw miss at the end of Game 5 against the Spurs (and, miraculously, managing to not get immediately fouled by Victor Wembanyama), and his woes at the charity stripe, while frustrating, didn’t ultimately cost the Knicks a chance at the championship. What about his regular season? Was he able to be effective when teams weren’t spending weeks scheming up Hack-A-Mitch stratagems?
In 2025-26, Mitchell Robinson appeared in 60 regular season games (his most since playing 72 in 2021-22). He shot a remarkable 72% from the floor – not quite his NBA single-season record 74% from 2019-20 – and his 4.2 offensive rebounds per game were second in the league to Portland’s Donovan Clingan, who played 27 minutes a game to Mitch’s under 20. And he was clearly effective when on the floor: his Box Plus/Minus and WS/48 (two stats that do not take into account minutes played) were both second on the team, behind only Jeremy Sochan and his paltry 111 total minutes. His work on the glass was still prodigious, gobbling up an absurd 24% of all available offensive rebounds while on the floor, and he managed to shoot free throws at a 40% clip – not good by any stretch, but reasonable enough to keep opponents honest.
Of course, everything comes back to the old adage that sometimes availability is the best ability. At his current salary of a hair under $13 million, Mitchell Robinson was able to contribute more value to the Knicks than an equivalent player taking up 8.38% of the salary cap. He played the seventh most minutes on the team in the regular season and he made the sixth most money on the team. Acceptable? Sure. However, if, on his next contract, Mitch is looking for a significant raise, the value proposition quickly slides further and further away from the positive.
The sad truth is that Mitchell Robinson is not an 82 game player because he’ll never approach playing 82 games, and he isn’t a 16 game player because he couldn’t make a damn free throw if the life of one of his trucks depending on it. As a backup center on a deep, flexible, and championship-caliber team, this was acceptable, but, if the Lakers or the Kings (led by Scott Perry, the GM of the Knicks when they drafted Robinson in 2018)3 want to put him in their starting lineup, I fear they are in for a nasty surprise. And for the Knicks, this roster as currently constructed has, by my reckoning, about two years left in their championship window before difficult decisions will have to be made regarding the Starting Five That Finally Could. Leon Rose and Mike Brown have shown themselves to be adept at creating flexible, effective lineups that utilize bench players on value-oriented contracts, and, to me, saddling them with a $25 million dollar backup center who can’t play back-to-backs and can’t hit a fucking free throw isn’t a recipe for continuing that success.
Mitch will forever be a Knicks legend, the bridge from a woebegone era to a banner-raising era. May his trucks forever haunt the streets of Midtown, but, sadly, I don’t think his new contract has any place on James Dolan’s ledger. Get that bag Mitch, and make sure it matches your ride as you roll on out of New York.
1This draft is full of interesting names almost a decade later (and no, Kevin Knox is not one of them). All-Stars=Luka (3), SGA (11), Jaren Jackson Jr. (4), Brunson (33). Sub-All-Star-But-Still-Pretty-Good=Michael Porter Jr. (14), Kevin Huerter (19), Anfernee Simons (24), Jarred Vanderbilt (41), Bruce Brown (42), and the dynamic duo of Miles Bridges (derogatory, 12) and Mikal Bridges (celebratory, 10). OAKAAK=Brunson, Mikal, Knox (9), Donte DiVincenzo (17), Landry Shamet (26), Omari Spellman (30), Mitch (36), Svi Mykhailiuk (47), Keita Bates-Diop (48), Shake Milton (54).
2The extreme decrease in shot blocking from his rookie year to now is, in my view, probably a good thing. Mitch is no longer flying out to the three point line for blocks, opting instead to focus his energy on rebounding, and, maybe more importantly, not averaging 3.3 fouls a game in just over 20 minutes of action a night, as he did in his rookie season.
3I can’t say that I remembered this one, but apparently the Knicks hired Scott Perry 3 months after he agreed to a new position in Sacramento, and, as recompense for this poaching, handed the Kings a future second round pick. Brock Aller is rolling over on the carpet of his MSG office.
ezra gans 
