ORLANDO, Fla.
When you watch Mitchell Robinson dominate in the paint, pulling down offensive rebounds between the two and three players opponents send at him or guarding the rim on the other end of the floor, it’s understandable why a coach would want him in the starting lineup and on the floor as much as possible.
But for Robinson and Knicks coach Mike Brown, it’s been a balancing act. As often has been the case throughout his career, Robinson remains under constant watch. He was in street clothes for the first four games of the season and is sidelined for half of every back-to-back set. While the Knicks insist there is no injury and it’s just management of his workload, he heads to the bench after short stretches of minutes. When possible, he is hidden at the end of games because of his struggles at the free-throw line.
The numbers for Robinson are staggering, but only if you don’t break it down on a per-game basis. He’s leading the NBA in offensive rebounds per game, which is fine. Go to per 36 minutes, and his offensive rebounding numbers are on a pace that would shatter historical marks.
He entered Saturday’s game against the Magic averaging 11.3 offensive rebounds per 36 minutes. Among players who have played at least five games, the closest to him is Steven Adams at 8.4 and Rockets teammate Clint Capela at 8.3. Robinson’s stats come in a very small sample size — he hasn’t played enough to qualify for the list of league leaders — but to put his work in perspective, Jayson Williams holds the single-season record for offensive rebounds per 36 minutes with 6.81 in 1997-98.
But the games are not played in per-36-minute segments — and ideally, not in the three-minute bursts to which Robinson has been limited this season since returning from what the team called left ankle workload management.
So we add up Robinson’s offensive rebound numbers and imagine what they could be if he were playing 34 minutes a night or 30 or even the high 20s that Brown has said Robinson now has the freedom to play.
“Just go out there and play hard,” Robinson said. “Like, do the little things, box out, offensive rebounding, everything else is going to work itself out.”
“I try to talk to all the guys all the time,” Brown said. “But it’s Casey [Smith, the Knicks VP of sports medicine] leading the load management program, so he’s the one who dictates it along with Mitch and doctors and Mitch’s agent. So whatever they tell me, I’m just recycling what Casey says to Mitch, but I try to communicate with him as much as possible.”
Robinson dismisses every question about the decision, leaving it up to Brown and the medical staff.
“I feel like I adjusted pretty well, getting out there playing hard for my little short minutes bursts, whatever,” he said. “Just taking it all in. Just continue to play hard, and if they need me out there longer, shorter, whatever, I’m just there.”
The end game to this process is to get him to the end of the regular season — and the postseason — ready to contribute.
“Just healthy, ready to play, that’s the biggest goal,” Robinson said. “Continue to do everything right and just keep hooping. It was [mentally tough] at first, but after thinking about it a lot, obviously, I don’t want to miss no playoffs or later on in the future. Whatever’s best, just going to stick to it.”
Nothing is free in life
About the free throws — which Robinson has worked hard at for years and still struggles with — he is 2-for-9 this season, including 1-for-6 on Wednesday.
“Obviously, he’s got to make free throws,” Brown said. “We have a rotation, and most times in the rotation at the end of games, Josh [Hart] is going to be out there. So he won’t be out there a ton, but if we need a rebound, he’s going to be out there. And he’s got to knock down the free throws. And he’s working at it, we’re working at it with him, and I truly believe he’s going to get better.”
KAT: Yankees are Topps
We wrote about Karl-Anthony Towns’ passion for card collecting last month, and shortly after that, his Instagram account in which he opens packs resulted in a crazy score — landing the 1/1 Yoshinobu Yamamoto 2024 Topps Inception MLB Logoman card. But rather than add it to his collection, he put it in a Fanatics Collect auction and sold it for a staggering $72,000.
You may wonder why an NBA player earning north of $50 million a year would sell the card rather than putting the one-of-a-kind item in his collection. It’s all about loyalty.
The Knicks’ Karl-Anthony Towns interacts with a young fan at the launch of the 2025-26 Topps Basketball trading cards show at the NBA Store in New York City on Oct. 23. Credit: Topps
“I got the card. I sold that [thing],” Towns said. “ I’m a big Yankee fan. My collection has a lot of Yankees in it. So I think the world of him as a player. I love watching him pitch, one of the best in the game. Especially as a pitcher growing up, it’s always great when you see the best go out there and play chess with some of the best hitters in the world. I’m just a Yankee fan. That’s really it. Sometimes someone will appreciate the card more than I will and I want to make sure that’s how the story went.”
Towns said the rarest card in his collection shows that — a 1933 Lou Gehrig Goudey card.
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
