Mitchell Robinson: Superhero Ground Zero
It’s easy to overlook, but has Mitchell Robinson already established himself as a top-five Knick all-time at his position?
To properly measure Mitchell Robinson’s place in New York Knicks history, you have to start 44 years before he became a Knick: 1974, when Willis Reed retired from playing and carved a dividing line in franchise history, a B.C./A.D. split. History was never the same, for three reasons.
First, Reed’s retirement marked the end of the Knicks’ Golden Age – not only a run of years that saw them reach three Finals and win two, but an anomaly fans had grown spoiled by. Consider the absurd truth of the following sentence: for the better part of a decade, New York’s rotation was literally mostly Hall of Famers. In 1970, four of the eight Knicks to play 1000+ minutes are inductees (Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley and Dave DeBusschere), along with six of the eight from ‘73 (those four plus Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas).
Second, the game itself was changing. The NBA and ABA merged in 1976, adding a slew of new teams to the Association as well as one of the ABA’s most memorable schticks: the 3-point ball. Perhaps no rule change since adding the 24-second clock has made a bigger impact on the way the game’s evolved, and not just the surface-level shift of more and more players from every position letting loose from long-range. Danny Chau of The Ringer recently wrote of other side effects:
The NBA’s 3-point era, beginning in 1979, was a clear line of demarcation in the grander arc of basketball, but just as important was a trend that ran parallel: the widening legality of dribbling techniques from the 1980s onward. More open interpretations of dribbling allowed the game to move beyond the flat-palmed standard that had defined it for its first century and into more fluid, expressive patterns of motion. The expansion of legal dribbling motions created more opportunities for explosive movement, both laterally and vertically. That sense of freedom on the court invited a greater array of athletes who found new ways of expressing their gifts within the confines of the game. There is more stress placed on the body of an NBA athlete today than ever before because the bar for functional athleticism in the NBA is higher than it’s ever been before.
Finally, the storytelling of the game itself is unrecognizable from the past, and I’m not talking advanced stats; I’m not even talking this century. It wasn’t until Reed’s final season that the NBA started tracking steals, blocked shots, offensive and defensive rebounds (before then, only total rebounds were tallied). Would you believe the league didn’t record games started until after Magic and Bird arrived? All of which is to say there’s limited use comparing players from before the mid-’70s and after.
Having said that, here’s a truth you don’t hear a lot: after Patrick Ewing, Mitchell Robinson could – could easily – be the most impactful player the Knicks have drafted and developed in the last 50 years. He’s also the first Knick draft pick since Ewing who’s become an all-time top-5 Knick at his position. Sound wild to say about a dude who could be the team’s seventh- or eighth-highest paid player a year from now? It’s not.
Here is every Knick drafted since 1974 – that’s 50 drafts – to play at least as many games with the team as Mitch has in his five seasons: Ray Williams, Micheal Ray Richardson, Bill Cartwright, Trent Tucker, Ewing, Gerald Wilkins, Kenny Walker, Mark Jackson, Greg Anthony, Charlie Ward and David Lee. Ewing is arguably the greatest Knick ever. Duh. How many of the others did more as Knickerbockers than Mitch has so far?
Williams, Tucker, Wilkins, Walker, Anthony and Ward all had their moments, but in this debate they’re seated at the kiddie table. Richardson, Cartwright, Jackson and Lee all made All-Star games as Knicks, something Robinson hasn’t come close to doing. But similar to Lee, he’s shown growth every year of his career, setting career-highs last year in offensive and defensive rebounding rates while upping his assist rate by 40% and lowering his turnover rate 12%. The other three all peaked early and faded: Richardson entered the league at 23, was an All-Star from 24 to 26 and out of the league by 30; Cartwright was an All-Star his rookie season and never again; Jackson made it in year two, just the once.
Lee never made the playoffs as a Knick. Richardson – whom Reed was so enamored with he reportedly insisted then-GM Eddie Donovan draft him ahead of Larry Bird – did once, a pedestrian performance as the ‘81 Knicks were swept in a best-of-3 by the Reggie Theus/Artis Gilmore Bulls. Cartwright had a number of strong showings in the ‘84 playoffs playing co-pilot alongside Bernard King’s God. Jackson had his moments in the postseason, particularly his first couple trips there with Rick Pitino.
Meanwhile, Robinson was the most valuable player when the Knicks beat Cleveland in last year’s playoffs, and that wasn’t some big-fish-in-a-small-pond stuff, coming against an All-Star center in Jarrett Allen and All-Future big in Evan Mobley. It was the sort of performance that adds a dimension or two to a young player’s legacy. So where does Mitch rank among centers in franchise history?
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