The Mitchell Robinson Trade Primer

December 15 is two days away. Let's set up the what will likely be a major conversation topic over the next eight weeks.

Good morning! I hope everyone is well. Reminder that New York heads to Orlando to face the Magic at 6pm on Sunday night. Then it’s three more days off until their next game, on December 19 in Minnesota. I’ll be on halftime for the game this weekend.

In the meantime, check out my convo from yesterday with the author of the exceptional “Last Night in Basketball,” Jared Dubin. Very insightful convo with someone who knows the league really well.

The Mitchell Robinson Trade Primer

Maybe it was meant to be.

While all of us are still smarting from that can of whoopass the Hawks opened up in the second half on Wednesday night, everything happens for a reason - even sports losses that leave veins popping out of your neck.

For the Knicks, this loss gives them something that a victory (plus an additional victory against the Bucks) wouldn’t have provided: rest. Heading into last night, New York’s roster contained four of the NBA’s top 10 in total minutes played, including three of the top four (Brunson is in 10th, while Karl Anthony Towns is in 35th thanks to two missed games). If there’s a team that really didn’t need an 83rd game on their schedule, it was this one.

But that’s not the only reason I’m seeing a half filled glass this morning: the loss gives me the perfect opportunity to write a timely column given the time of year and the issues facing the team.

Sunday is December 15, aka, the unofficial start of NBA trade season. As Bobby Marks recently pointed out, 87 percent of the league’s players will be trade eligible starting on Sunday.

Does that mean the floodgates will open Monday morning? Almost certainly not. As Bobby also points out, 20 of the 27 in-season trades last year happened in the week before the deadline.

Just don’t tell that to Leon Rose.

In three of the four seasons with Rose running the show, the Knicks have essentially kicked off trade season. The Derrick Rose trade happened six and a half weeks before the deadline, the Cam Reddish deal happened four weeks before the deadline, and OG Anunoby was acquired five and a half weeks before the deadline. Only the Josh Hart trade happened close to the clock striking midnight.

Fast forward to now, and the Knicks find themselves in an interesting spot. Mitchell Robinson, who Shams reported yesterday is “unlikely to get cleared until at least late January into February,” is currently taking up a little more than 10 percent of New York’s salary cap and has contributed as much to their efforts this season as you and me.

Among players on contending teams, only Cleveland’s Max Strus, who makes $15.2 million and is expected to make his season debut tonight, earns anything remotely around Robinson’s salary without having given his team any production so far. After him, you have to go to Zeke Nnaji ($8.9M) who has been out of Denver’s rotation and who the Nuggets are actively trying to trade, even if it costs them an asset.

Point is, with cap restrictions being what they are, it’s somewhere between extremely unwise and impossible to contend for a title without making full use of all the resources at your disposal. A $14.3 million salary slot is quite the resource, especially when it can be coupled with additional salaries to open up a vast array of potential targets.

Now, it should go without saying that the best trade deadline acquisition the Knicks make may very well be simply waiting out Robinson’s injury and plugging him in when he returns.

It’s hard to watch some of what we saw on Wednesday night and not think that Mitch could help in a significant way, both as a way to bolster their rebounding and offer some modicum of resistance at the rim. Let’s take a quick look back before we go through all the in’s and out’s of Mitch’s trade situation and examine some potential targets, shall we?