DALLAS — Mitchell Robinson still isn’t logging heavy minutes — but Knicks head coach Mike Brown insists the workload is climbing.
Robinson played 18 minutes in Monday’s loss to the Miami Heat, New York’s fourth straight road defeat, but Brown pushed back on the idea that his starting center is stuck in a hard cap.
“It’s increased. It’s gone up three times,” Brown said postgame. “And again, it’s all part of the load management thing. So it’s not necessarily a [minutes] restriction.”
Robinson played 20 minutes in his Halloween season debut in Chicago but hasn’t topped 18 in any of his six games since. Brown said the seven-footer can play more, but the Knicks are following the load-management plan designed by vice president of sports medicine Casey Smith and his staff.
“He could play 27 minutes,” Brown said. “I threw [Guerschon Yabusele] in because [Karl-Anthony Towns] picked up early fouls and Yabu was playing well. I didn’t go back to Mitch because of that — but he’s definitely in the 20s.”
It has been a long runway back for Robinson, who underwent two procedures to repair stress fractures in his left ankle two summers ago. He arrived at training camp healthy but was pulled from a preseason game on Oct. 9 and held out three weeks before debuting in Chicago.
The expectation is Robinson won’t play in all games of arduous stretches or both legs of back-to-backs this season. But Brown has pushed back on the idea Robinson will be in and out of the lineup indefinitely.
“I’m not sure about that,” he said on Nov. 12, after resting Robinson in Memphis. “We’ve gotta take it one game at a time and follow what the medical people tell us.”
Even then, Brown said Robinson’s cadence was already trending upward.
“He can go longer with his stretches. He can go longer with his minutes now than before,” Brown said. “It’s constantly on the rise, based on what Casey and his group tell us night in and night out.”
Robinson is averaging 3.9 points, nine rebounds and one block in 16.6 minutes per game. He leads the NBA with 12.5 offensive rebounds per 36 minutes and grabbed eight offensive boards in just 14 minutes in Friday’s win over Miami.
“Freaking Mitchell Robinson! Oh my God!” Brown shouted that night. “Eight freaking offensive rebounds! Way to go Mitch!”
This is also a contract year for Robinson, who can become an unrestricted free agent this summer if no agreement is reached during the season.
