Good news for the Knicks in this game: Mitchell Robinson outscored “MVP Candidate” Nikola Jokic 17 to 6. It sounds weird, but this was probably an expected outcome for that matchup. Jokic has been relatively meek when it comes to trying to make shots this year, and Robinson is the kind of center (the athletic kind) who will make it hard for him. And what is Jokic even going to do to stop Robinson from dunking it every time? The only thing stopping Robinson this game was his total lack of basketball skill and his teammates not passing it to him every time.
Bad news for the Knicks in this game: everything else. Non-Jokic Nuggets players outscored Non-Robinson Knicks players 123 to 75. If the Knicks FO actually thought they were putting together a solid, low-playoff-seed team, then they were as wrong as any FO has been wrong in a long time. It’s just too easy to rag on the Knicks right now, so I’ll stop and let them have their minor victory of Robinson outscoring (but probably not outplaying) Jokic.
Now seems like a good a time as any to try and get Robinson to expand his offensive game a little bit. It can’t be worse than whatever random garbage the other Knicks are throwing up (speaking of throwing up, that’s what I do when I see the Knicks play, HA, GOT EEM) at the rim, can it? We’d find out pretty quickly that it can be worse, but a one-game experiment of him shooting tons of threes à la Mark Madsen can only result in one loss, not multiple losses.