It seems that Mitchell Robinson may finally be ready to soak up more minutes for the New York Knicks.

Head coach Mike Brown has previously hinted at the possibility, without ever offering a concrete confirmation on when. Well, confirmation may have just come in the form of Robinson’s performance during the Knicks’ Sunday afternoon victory over the Orlando Magic. The 27-year-old big man racked up a little over 24.5 minutes—by far and away his season high. 

Prior to Sunday, Robinson eclipsed the 20-minute benchmark just once through 14 appearances. And he never sniffed 22 total minutes. Flirting with a 25-minute outing, then, is a big deal. 

The question: Is this a sign of things to come? 

Karl-Anthony Towns’ absence fueled the Knicks’ reliance on Mitchell Robinson

We can’t begin to project forward here without acknowledging the special circumstances under which Robinson approached 25 minutes. 

Karl-Anthony Towns missed his first game of the season with a calf strain. Given the state of the Knicks’ center depth, Mike Brown had almost no choice but to increase Robinson’s workload. 

Sure, Ariel Hukporti had perhaps the best game of his career against the Magic. Guerschon Yabsuele was more serviceable than he’s been for most of this season, too. But pushing Hukporti beyond the 20-minute threshold was in itself a stretch. And if we’ve learned anything this season, it’s that Yabusele probably can’t handle more than the nine-to-12 minutes of run he’s getting.

Even so, the necessity by which Robinson arrived here doesn’t dilute its significance. The Knicks would not have rolled him out for so long if he couldn’t handle it. More importantly, they wouldn’t be playing him so much if he wasn’t impacting the game for such a large pocket of time.

Don’t underestimate the significance of this Mitchell Robinson wrinkle

That’s been the (somewhat) quiet bugaboo of Robinson’s season. He has seldom looked like the All-Defense-level force that has endeared him to fans. Not even confining him to smaller-bursts of court time and overall availability has tapped into that part of his game. 

New York’s defense isn’t just more reliant on OG Anunoby, and Deuce McBride (who, by the way, could be in line to miss some time). It has been flat-out better with Robinson off the court.

This was not the case during the game against the Magic. Like usual, Robinson admirably waged battle on the offensive glass. The Knicks snared nearly 40 percent of their misses with him in the game. 

More critically, he provided a ton of defensive energy. There were a couple of spotty moments, including over-aggressive closeouts, and slow-footed rotations. Overall, though, Robinson brought a steadying presence to the middle, gummed up Orlando’s dribble penetration, and helped snuff out a few of the Magic’s transition-scoring opportunities.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is about one game, or solely about KAT’s absence. Robinson isn’t suddenly going to start playing both ends of back-to-backs. And he shouldn’t need to regularly log over 25 minutes when Towns is healthy. 

The fact that he can, though, is huge for a Knicks squad shallower than many had hoped—particularly when it comes to going up against bigger, more physical squads they could feasibly meet in the playoffs.