Mitchell Robinson embraces playoff intensity after being part of Knicks' woeful era

ATLANTA — As the Knicks readied for Game 3 with the opening-round playoff series against the Atlanta Hawks shifting to State Farm Arena, there was only one player who had ever been a part of a Knicks team heading into a playoff game here.

Mitchell Robinson.

And really, he was the only player on either team who was around when these two teams last met in the playoff five years ago. He didn’t play in the series, sidelined with an injury. But maybe more than that, Robinson is the one player on the Knicks who was around when giving away a Game 2 at Madison Square Garden wasn’t even a thought because getting to the playoffs wasn’t something the most ardent — or delusional — fan could conceive.

It’s hard to remember through the Knicks' run of playoff appearances of late that before that Atlanta series, the Knicks hadn’t made the playoffs in a decade and that’s what Robinson arrived to in the 2018-19 season as a rookie. David Fizdale was the coach and the team was 17-65 with a lineup that wasn’t, well, going to be favorites in a playoff series.

Enes Kanter was the starting center. Kevin Knox and Noah Vonleh started the most games. Knox was the lottery pick while Robinson was a second-round pick and the team added Allonzo Trier as an undrafted rookie. Robinson is the only one still in the NBA.

“Yeah, it’s crazy,” Robinson said as he was preparing for this series. “Was it five years ago when we played them in the playoffs? I didn’t get to play in that series. Five years later here we are with a different team for both sides. It’s going to be amazing. Going to be fun. Going to get after it.”

Now, a loss in the playoffs like Monday's Game 2 at Madison Square Garden which evened the series is a catastrophe, just like last season’s disappointing finish when the Knicks fell in the Eastern Conference finals. They were two wins shy of making the team’s first NBA Finals appearance in a quarter century and that was enough to get the coach who brought them back into contention, Tom Thibodeau, fired. Still, Robinson has reminded his teammates only accustomed to winning, that it wasn’t always that way.

“Yeah, me and Mitch talked about when they won maybe 17 games or something,” Mikal Bridges said. “I told him that same year I was in Phoenix and we won 19, so, actually thought we were worse than him.

“He made me bring my phone out. I was like, no way at the time you all had more losses than us when I was in Phoenix. We looked it up and I was like, ‘Oh damn, that’s crazy,’ because I thought we were the worst team ever.”

Maybe it’s because of remembering those days that Robinson is enjoying these days more than most. He is embracing the pressure, asking for more physicality and remaining in the moment.

“Hell yeah, I love this [expletive],” Robinson said Thursday morning after the Knicks' final preparations for Game 3. “This [expletive] is fun. This is what it’s about. Getting in, getting active. I’m ready to go.”

Robinson had 13 points and seven rebounds in less than 20 minutes in Game 2 and hasn’t missed a shot yet in this series. In Game 1, he had just one shot, but just four rebounds and none on the offensive glass. That led to him taking the court Monday for Game 2 with words scrawled across his ankle tape reading, “Stand on business.”

“I had to stand on business,” he said. “And I think I did.”

He also was assessed a technical foul in Game 2 when he knocked Dyson Daniels down on a hard screen and walked over him, leading to both teams rushing into a scrum.

“It was a lot of [expletive] that led up to that,” Robinson said. “But I ain’t gonna speak on it.”

If that, along with the Hack-a-Mitch tactic the Hawks have used, trying to send him to the free throw line where he has converted 40.8% this season, makes the Atlanta fans ready for him, louder and angrier, Robinson is fine with that. 

“I like playing away,” Robinson said. “I feel like I play better away than I do at home. Just the energy is like me versus the world.”

It’s a long way from those early years when Robinson arrived without a college game played, a shy blank slate of a player, and suffered through the harshest of learning curves. He’s now enjoyed the other side of it, in the playoffs in five of the last six seasons, remaining in the moment even as he approaches uncertainty in the offseason as an unrestricted free agent — deferring all questions about that to a standard, “That’s what I have an agent for.”

New York is all he’s known and he’s grown up with the Knicks.

“He’s spent his whole adult life in New York,” said Deuce McBride, who is the second-longest tenured Knick only behind Robinson. “He [tells us] the way the fans have always been good to him and for the team, but when you’re winning it’s a lot better."

“I done see it all,” Robinson said. “This is Year Eight for me, going from not being in the playoffs, to the bottom of the East, to now one of the tops in the East. It’s been amazing. Long journey. Trust the process and here we are.

“I felt it was going to change. And luckily it did five years ago.”

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

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.