Mitchell Robinson is making free throws.
Maybe it’s lightning in a bottle. Maybe it’s a one-off performance, an outlier in the most miserable free-throw shooting season of Robinson’s miserable free-throw shooting career.
But for a night — a night the Knicks hope their rim-protecting big man can replicate — Robinson could not miss on repeated trips to the free throw line in New York’s 116-107 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday.
The bar is low, but it’s still worth noting: Robinson entered Friday’s matchup against the Sixers shooting 8-of-33 from the foul line this season. Returning to the Knicks lineup after sitting the front leg of the back-to-back in Indiana, Robinson shot seven-of-eight from the foul line against Philadelphia. He made two consecutive free throws twice on Thursday, the first time he’s done so since Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals on May 27.
As a result, the thought of intentionally fouling the Knicks’ historically poor free throw shooter never entered Philadelphia head coach Nick Nurse’s action plan. Robinson played a season-high 26 minutes and posted a 21-point, 16-rebound double-double off the bench.
The development is the biggest takeaway from New York’s loss to the 76ers. It may not be much of a development at all: Robinson has had hot free throw shooting instances in the past, but rarely has he kept it consistent. In one night, the Knicks big man improved his free throw percentage on the season from 24 percent to 36.6 percent.
The Knicks may have been resigned to defeat either way, regardless of whether or not Robinson’s hot hand from the foul line gave him a boost. They played an emotional NBA Cup Final against the San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday, then faced a road-home back-to-back less than 48 hours later, a pair of 7:00 tip-offs after a weeklong business trip to Las Vegas.
The Knicks looked like it on Friday.
Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns each posted 22 points, and Mikal Bridges added 21 points, but OG Anunoby logged two points in 31 minutes, and Josh Hart scored five points in 33 minutes on the floor.
Games like this come and go, and while the Knicks live a no-excuse mantra, they can give themselves grace. They may not have hung an NBA Cup banner at Madison Square Garden, but they sure celebrated the Cup win outside the arena ahead of tipoff, then again ahead of pre-game introductions.
“Its weird ’cause you are fighting, fighting. fighting and your emotions are high,” head coach Mike Brown said ahead of tipoff. “You just have to figure out a way to keep going. It definitely is a weird feeling. That’s why I give our guys a ton of credit for last night’s game. I started [rookie Mohamed Diawara], he played almost 20 minutes. Tyler [Kolek] played a lot of minutes for us. We had other guys step up and get us over the hump….This team is deep and these guys have all bought into what we want to do as a group.”
The Knicks, as expected, were a step slow — and Philadelphia’s new young core blew right by them.
Sixers All-Star Tyrese Maxey finished with 30 points on 11-of-24 shooting from the field, at least nine of which came from his trademark snatch-back three that kept The Garden gasping with each make. And No. 3 overall pick VJ Edgecombe scored 23 points on 10-of-18 shooting in his MSG debut.
The Sixers, without Joel Embiid, handed the Knicks their second home loss of the season. They still own the NBA’s second-best home record at 13-2, behind only the 24-2 Oklahoma City Thunder and ahead of the 11-2 Detroit Pistons.
New York will have a chance to get back on track when the Miami Heat come to town on Saturday.
