CHARLESTON, S.C. — This probably won’t serve as a consolation to Mitchell Robinson, but even though he wasn’t on any of the movie posters, it’s hard to fathom “Apocalypse Now” without Robert Duvall’s Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, rhapsodizing about surfing under fire and the pleasing aroma of napalm in the morning.
It probably doesn’t ease Robinson’s frustrations to know that for all the attention Bono and the Edge get, U2 has been selling out arenas and stadiums around the globe since the Reagan Administration because Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. have been among the best who ever played bass and drums in a rock-and-roll band.
Robinson is an essential Knick. He is paramount to everything they wish to be, and when he is at his best he is everything they can be. He was at his best last spring in the playoff series against the Cavaliers. By the fifth game Robinson had reduced Cleveland’s big-man tandem of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen to dust, and practically to tears.
The thing about it? To know just how dominant Robinson was you had to actually watch the games. You had to actually see the rushed shots, the altered passes, the uncertainty of one Cavalier after another even thinking about taking the ball to the rack. The series stats lie. They say Robinson was good for 8.0 points, 9.8 rebounds, 2.2 blocks per game.
If you watched, you know better.
“The things he brings to our team, oftentimes you’re not going to measure them in a box score,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said Wednesday afternoon, following his team’s workout at McAlister Field House on the campus of The Citadel.
“Where he has great value is rim protection, offensive rebounding, total rebounding. He’s a terrific pick-and-roll defender, gets great pressure on the rim, getting out of screens, and when he’s bringing bodies with him he’s opening up the floor for us.”
RJ Barrett was more succinct: “He’s a monster.”
He can be. He can also be lured back to earth, which is what happened in the next round against the Heat, and primarily Bam Adebayo. But even that merits explanation. Like with his wingman, Barrett, who at least once a game, usually more, runs a beautiful-to-watch two-man game with him, Robinson is still shockingly young, still only 25, still with a yet-to-be-established ceiling.
And like Barrett, he has shown improvement in each of his five years as a Knick.
“That’s my guy,” Barrett said. “He can run the floor, he blocks everything, people are scared to go up against him when he’s down there. He sets screens, and he’s a huge lob threat and that opens up things for the rest of us.”
His coaches appreciate every piece of Robinson’s fame. His teammates certainly do — Quentin Grimes: “He’s probably the most important player on the team” — and there are nights when he is just a filthy nightmare for opposing coaches and players to counter.
But life isn’t easy as a role player. It’s hard to be Silvio when you’re sharing a scene with Tony Soprano, even if Steven Van Zandt had a lifetime of practice for the role hearing crowds chant and swoon for his boss, The Boss, night after night even as he often shared a microphone with him.
Undoubtedly John Cazale would’ve preferred a turn in the spotlight instead of being the quintessential supporting actor to Pacino, to DeNiro, to Hackman.
So sometimes Robinson gets a little salty that the Knicks never run a play for him, that the only time he touches the ball is when he’s attacking the offensive glass or flushing a Barrett feed. Famously, last March, on Snapchat, he … well, snapped:
“Tired asf of just being out there for cardio fam like I want to play basketball to really just wasting my time and energy.”
He added a facepalm emoji for extra effect. And you can understand. What draws anyone to basketball is a primitive desire: shoot the ball. Then shoot it again. They make movies about shooters, even fictional ones like Jimmy Chitwood and Henry Steele and Swish James. Nobody ever made a movie about a guy with a terrific net value.
Though Thibodeau all but writes sonnet about Robinson’s, which has leapt from minus-5 as a rookie to almost plus-5 last year.
“That’ significant,” the coach said. “We want to challenge him to continue to grow and get better.”
If that happens, you probably won’t see it in the box score, and Robinson won’t be the first thing you notice, or the player fans want to talk about. That’s OK. Ringo Starr probably has his bad days, too. Though probably not on the days when he looks at his bank account.