Notes on Mitchell Robinson's free agency, including potential Knicks return and what he'll get paid

A few notes on Mitchell Robinson’s pending free agency, with analysis of Robinson’s strengths, future projections, and value from Joseph Gill, an analytics consultant for NBA, WNBA, and NCAA players.

Interest from contenders

Robinson and the Knicks were far apart on extension talks prior to the All-Star break. Will they close the gap between now and the end of next month? That seems unlikely. Robinson should enter the offseason as an unrestricted free agent.

Some members of the organization expect Robinson to garner interest from multiple playoff contenders.

None of the 2022 playoff teams project to have cap space this summer. So unless one of those teams sheds salary, the most they could offer Robinson is the mid-level exception, which projects to $44.5 million over four years.

Return to Knicks possible? 

Prior to the NBA Draft Lottery, some Knicks decision-makers were in favor of re-signing Robinson. Those decision-makers have viewed Robinson as pivotal to Tom Thibodeau’s defense. I don’t know if there is a universal consensus on re-signing Robinson.

In the days after the NBA Lottery, multiple people in touch with the Knicks say they were considering offseason scenarios for the center position if Robinson signs elsewhere.

I wouldn’t read too much into this, though. Any competent NBA team plans for all possible outcomes of their own player’s free agency. 

Also, it’s worth noting that the Knicks have sent trainers to work with Robinson this offseason, per a league source.

Could a team with cap space pursue Robinson?

The Detroit Pistons and the Oklahoma City Thunder were among the teams who had interest in Robinson prior to the 2022 NBA Trade Deadline. Both project to have significant cap space this summer.

The Knicks can exceed the cap to re-sign Robinson, but I’m sure there is a number that they wouldn’t exceed to bring him back.

Also, if the Knicks find themselves in position to acquire a top player via trade, Robinson would be an integral part of the process. He is one of the most attractive players the Knicks have from a trade perspective.

Did the Knicks mismanage Robinson's pending free agency?

If Robinson signs with another team this summer and the Knicks don’t execute a sign-and-trade in the transaction, they will be rightfully criticized.

New York could have locked Robinson up to an extension well before the February trade deadline. There were extension talks between Robinson’s side and the club throughout the season, but at one point there was frustration over the gap between what the Knicks were offering and what Robinson was interested in.

If that frustration is a factor in Robinson signing elsewhere – and the Knicks don’t get anything in return via sign-and-trade – the franchise will lose one of their best draft picks over the past decade for nothing. That would be significant mismanagement from Leon Rose and his group.

To get a sense of what Robinson’s value is to the Knicks, to opposing teams (and why he doesn’t necessarily need to shoot threes to improve as a player), we asked Joseph Gill to offer an analysis of the center.

Gill is an analytics consultant for several NBA players, agents, and trainers, including NBA trainer Packie Turner.

"Joseph Gill is the best in the business that I’ve worked with from an analytics standpoint. Helping me find weaknesses, bolster strengths," says Turner, whose clients include Jordan Poole and Grant Williams. "Might sound like a strange comparison, but I’d call him my spellcheck. I think I got the plan right, but he might highlight something I overlooked or go further in-depth on something.

"Joseph’s attention to detail truly separates him. His commitment to the job he takes on is also second to none. Whether it’s helping me target how to help some finish better and providing the data to back it up, one foot for two feet and how they deal with contact/draw fouls.

"Or leaning on jumpers and percentage there versus when on control, on balance and ready. With the clips to prove it. Joseph has shown me not just that he is a great value add, but truly that he in invaluable."

Below, Gill offers his analysis of Robinson and concludes that New York should retain the seven-footer:

For a player like Robinson, who led the NBA in field goal percentage (76 percent), finished second in offensive rebounds per game (4.1), and finished fourth in blocks per game (1.8), analytics aren't needed to answer whether or not he's valuable or determine precisely how to deploy him. At 24 years old, Mitch is an elite shot-blocker and finisher, and those types of players have value.

However, many fans are quick to point out several aspects of Robinson's play that figure to lower his value, both on the court and on the contract Mitch will end up signing.

According to Synergy, Robinson only attempted 12 of his 343 shots outside of three feet, with his longest attempt on the year coming in at only seven feet. Likewise, out of his 469 tracked possessions in the half-court this season, only 17 came in post-up situations. So, while Robinson is arguably the most elite finisher at the rim in the entire NBA, that's the only space from the floor he's currently doing his scoring from, and when the Knicks' offense is stalling out, posting Robinson up isn't an option to kickstart it back into gear.

This narrow offensive deployment is very apparent in his points per game average, and many fans would be uneasy paying top dollar for a player who only averaged 8.0 points a night in the most recent season. But, it's important to remember that basketball is a per-possession game of efficiency masquerading as a game of volume.

So, exactly how much is Mitchell Robinson worth in free agency? Can the Knicks reasonably expect to do better at center in 2022-23, either by adding through the draft or free agency, or even potentially with Jericho Sims, who is currently on the roster?

This question is where analytics can help.

I would consider paying $12-to-$13 million a year for Robinson as a complete steal. The reason I feel this way is straightforward: He's hyper-efficient offensively.

By scoring 610 points this season on only 484 possessions (343 shot attempts, 60 turnovers, 81 non-and-one fouls drawn resulting in free throws), Robinson's points per possession was a sterling 1.26. For perspective, the league-average PPP in the 2021-22 regular season was almost precisely 1.00, and among the 223 players with at least Robinson's amount of possessions, Mitchell's 1.26 PPP ranked second-best. So, when Robinson terminates a play, it results in 0.26 more points scored for the Knicks than their opponents will score on an average possession.

It shouldn't be surprising then that as a consultant whose flagship service is working with players to raise their PPP, there would be no sweeping changes that I would suggest making to Robinson's offensive game. Recently, I've been in a similar position with a similar player: When one of Daniel Gafford's skills trainers asked what I would recommend for his post-draft offense development, I replied that Gafford would be best served with continued emphasis on his finishing.

Spending offseasons trying to manufacture a skill set of less than league-average-efficiency shots in other areas isn't so much developing a "counter," it's more akin to training an already dangerous player to be less dangerous. Opposing teams will gladly exploit any amount of complacency when hunting for the highest possible efficiency shot. And, unfortunately, the data shows that most mid-range and post-up possessions score at below league-average efficiency.

The thought process for Robinson is identical to the one I had for Gafford. It all boils down to one question: As evident by his second-best PPP efficiency mark, what reasonable addition can be made to Robinson's offensive game that won't lower his marginal impact on his team's offense?

In theory, yes, any addition to a player's game makes them a more valuable player. But, in practice, the laws of basketball are governed more by opportunity cost than most suspect.

Even if Mitchell were to add what's essentially a Kevin Durant mid-range shot and was able to take three [mid-range shots] a game, if all the floating outside the lane meant that he received one less at-rim attempt per game, the Knicks would actually come out behind on this shot selection trade-off: The three mid-ranges would add 0.45 marginal points compared to the average Knicks half-court offense, while the one at-rim attempt adds a whopping 0.47 points all on its own.

The opportunity costs of basketball are brutal: An elite specialist could theoretically add an elite in-between game skill set and hurt his team if he ever deployed it.

I understand that 0.47 points might not sound like much, considering the average NBA team scored almost 111 points a game last season. However, on a per-possession basis, 0.47 points is larger than the distance between an open catch-and-shoot three for Steph Curry (worth 1.38 points on average) and an open catch-and-shoot three for Obi Toppin (worth 0.96 points on average) this season.

Remember, even after accounting that Robinson is a 48 percent foul shooter, a shot attempt at the rim in the half-court for Mitchell is worth more points than an open Curry three, and Robinson logged 5.7 at-rim half-court possessions per game last season. Would you ever tell Curry to change stuff up, maybe consider leaving the three-point line to post-up some, if he was getting 5.7 open catch-and-shoot threes a game doing what he's been doing? So, why would we entertain the idea of doing so with Robinson?

Even if his positioning was clogging the rim, surely it should be on his teammates to adapt to Robinson's elite at-rim efficiency. Why instead would it be Robinson's duty to sacrifice attempts and efficiency to execute his highly valuable skill set in a way most convenient to inferior finishers?

Clearly, I believe that the lane-clogging aspects of Robinson's positioning are minimal compared to the benefits provided by the threat of lobs and dump-downs to Robinson. Shots that score 1.42 points on a per-attempt basis simply print wins for the team attempting them.

What about the money?

My salary models agree entirely with this view on Robinson's impact. Suppose Robinson was a restricted free agent this summer. In that case, my model assesses him as a $20,666,275 per year expected signing, and the model's R^2 of 0.82 with predicting the 2021 RFA class' eventual signings means that I have high confidence in this estimate.

So no, I do not think the Knicks can do better than Robinson if the team wants to take things in a different direction this summer.

While I view Sims, the most likely on-hand replacement if Robinson isn't retained, as a promising rookie, he is only a year younger than Robinson with just a 555-minute sample of his impact as an NBA player. Sims was able to put up similar finishing percentages on a much lower rate of attempts, but letting Robinson walk in favor of Sims is, to me, a clearly inferior option to retaining them both and being one of the few teams in the league to be able to run highly-efficient centers at opposing defenses for a full 48 minutes every single night.

If the Knicks were to look to the draft to replace Robinson with a player of a similar archetype, Duke's Mark Williams would be the logical choice within the area New York is slated to draft in the first round. While I am high on Williams, my draft model is flagging him as a player who likely delivers a high-efficiency outlook as a rookie, but should struggle with maintaining his college rate of attempts against stiffer NBA defenses.

I expect that Williams' immediate overall impact will be beneficial, but without a solid existing offensive scheme to walk into, his shot attempts might start at a lower rate than hoped for, and it would be up to Williams to develop from there. With his proven NBA impact, Robinson is undoubtedly the best choice at center for the 2022-23 Knicks.