Friday Mailbag

You asked, I answered

Good morning! Before I get to today’s mailbag, thanks to everyone who reached out to say they hoped I felt better. I was down for the count for a bit, but am very much on the mend, no doubt thanks to many of you lifting my spirits.

Now let’s answer some questions.

Ask Macri

You know what time it is. The season is exactly one month old, so what better time to answer some of your questions. New York has played 15 games so I took 15 questions. Only seemed right.

We’ll start with a good one from Sean:

Jon, where are you on keeping Mitch? Certainly not as a full time starter, but maybe playing more against certain teams (Philly, Cleveland, Orlando, etc). It feels like you think he's kind of a lock to get traded once he shows he can be healthy. I think I lean toward keeping Mitch - he was very important to the two playoffs series we've won against Cleveland and Philly.

This depends on which Mitch we’re going to get.

The Mitchell Robinson from the first 21 games of last season was a legitimate All-Defense candidate who was also pulling down offensive boards at a prolific rate. That wasn’t the same guy who we saw post-injury, and now Robinson is adding six months in which he hasn’t been able to engage in any traditional conditioning. That means at the very least, he’ll have to work himself into playing shape.

From there, there are other questions. Why, for example, has Robinson’s finishing plummeted from Wilt-esque levels to sub-60 percent last season, even before he returned from injury? How useful can he be against an offense like Boston’s, whose five-out spacing has rendered him ineffective in the past? And hovering over all of this, what is the risk of re-injury?

On the flip side, if I’m asking these questions, you can bet opposing teams are too, and I suspect Robinson’s market will be quite limited if and when the Knicks put him on the trade block. On the bright side, his contract remains a bargain, even if the team employing him has to keep their fingers crossed that he’ll actually play.

Ultimately, this comes down to what you can get. If there’s an opportunity to obtain a quality seventh man, even if you have to add salary (Precious?) and some of the few remaining draft assets to the deal, I think you have to consider it.

But who is their ideal target? That question is far harder to answer this year than in season’s past, which brings us to our next question from Lee: