On Tuesday, as the New York Knicks emerged from the rubble of back-to-back losses to would-be conference peers, Tom Thibodeau shined a Bat-Signal on a potential 7-foot savior. Mitchell Robinson has not played a minute this season, sidelined since last May following left ankle surgery, but the springy, shot-blocking big man was nearing a return. Robinson “did everything,” Thibodeau said and was “very active” as he inched closer to his season debut.
By any metric this has been a strong season in New York. The Knicks are 38–20 after squeezing past the woebegone Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday with the best winning percentage (65.5%) of the Thibodeau era. They have a firm grasp on the third seed in the Eastern Conference, well positioned to advance to the conference semifinals for the third straight season.
But this wasn’t a team built for that. The investments the Knicks made last offseason—swapping five first-round picks for Mikal Bridges, splitting up the ’Nova Knicks (peeling off one of them, anyway) to bring in Karl-Anthony Towns—were moves made to position the team as a championship contender.
Offensively, they are. The Knicks are third in offensive rating, per NBA.com. They shoot well from the floor (third) and from three (sixth). The assist numbers are up (11th in the NBA) while the turnovers are down (fourth). Towns has been as advertised, a menacing pick-and-pop threat shooting a career-best 43.2% from three-point range. Jalen Brunson, as he has throughout his Knicks tenure, has been outstanding.
The defense, though, has been ghastly. The Knicks are 19th in defensive efficiency, per NBA.com. They are 25th in opponent field goal percentage and dead last in opponent three-point percentage. Last Friday, they surrendered 142 points in a loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. On Sunday, the Boston Celtics scored 118. When the Knicks face top-10 offenses—like the Celtics and Cavs—the defense crumbles.
Towns has borne the brunt of the blame. Towns is a decent on-ball defender—witness his solid play against Nikola Jokic in last season’s conference semifinals—but he is eminently exploitable in space. Teams feast on Towns in pick-and-rolls. Boston, which has kicked the crap out of New York twice in the last two weeks, forced Towns to defend it 50 times on Sunday. “You get him moving,” noted an Eastern Conference assistant, “and he’s likely to either get lost or give up.”
None of this is new, of course. Minnesota understood Towns’s limitations, which is why the Wolves acquired Rudy Gobert in 2022. In the two seasons prior to Gobert’s arrival, Minnesota finished 28th and 13th in defensive efficiency. Towns was injured for most of Gobert’s first season. In his second, the duo backstopped the league’s top defense.
The Knicks have to be hoping Robinson has a similar effect. “Mitch is an elite pick-and-roll defender,” Thibodeau said. “[He’s] an elite rim protector [and] an elite offensive rebounder. Those are the things that you know are critical.” There’s evidence that he could. In 2021–22—Robinson’s last full season—he started alongside Julius Randle and played behind Evan Fournier and Kemba Walker. In a forgettable season, the Knicks finished 11th in defensive efficiency.
“I think you have to look at it and say, ‘Mitch was projected to be the starting center,’ ” Thibodeau said. “That means we’ve gone [58] games without our starting center. … I think guys have done a really good job stepping in. Could we do better? I always believe we could do better.”
In theory, Robinson, who could return to the lineup as soon as this weekend, will be a boost. He will add sorely needed rim protection; the Knicks are 29th in the NBA in blocks and 15th in contested shots. Robinson averaged a shade over a block per game last season, while contesting seven shots.
But Robinson has been chronically injured. He suited up for just 31 games last season and has played 60-plus in just three of his first six seasons. He will need time to work himself into game shape, perhaps more to figure out how to play alongside Towns. With six-ish weeks left on the regular-season calendar, that may not be enough.
Despite an 0–5 record against Boston and Cleveland—0–7 if you include the Oklahoma City Thunder, the class of the Western Conference—the Knicks are not sounding the alarm. A “work in progress” is how Towns described the team, and with Robinson out there’s some truth there. But asking Robinson to patch up a horrific New York defense to the level to compete with Boston and Cleveland may be asking too much.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Knicks’ Title Hopes Hinge on Improved Defense.
