Unusual but desperate: Knicks break up starting lineup, insert Mitchell Robinson
Knicks guard Josh Hart, middle, is defended by Indiana Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith and guard Tyrese Haliburton during the first half of Game 3 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals on Sunday in Indianapolis. Credit: AP/Jeff Roberson
INDIANAPOLIS
The Knicks needed a jolt. They needed to do something drastic, something dramatic in an attempt to save their season.
And so coach Tom Thibodeau rolled the dice before what for all practical purposes was a must-win Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals and broke up the starting lineup he had stuck with through thick and thin all season.
Thirty minutes before tipoff, the Knicks announced that Mitchell Robinson would start in place of Josh Hart as the Knicks, down 0-2, tried to pick up their first win of the series.
It was a desperate departure from what the Knicks have done all season, and the Pacers seemed to smell the panic early. Indiana went ahead by 20 points with a little more than three minutes left in the first half before settling for a 58-45 halftime lead.
The Knicks' starting lineup of Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Hart had logged a league-high 940 minutes together in the regular season, far more than any other team in the NBA. The Knicks were widely thought to have one of the most talented starting groups in the league, with their weakness being their thin bench.
Yet the starting group has struggled in the playoffs. In their two losses to the Pacers, the Knicks' starting group was a minus-29. In their first 14 playoff games, they were a minus-50.
Robinson missed the Knicks' first 58 games of the season as he recovered from offseason ankle surgery. When he returned, he usually was a substitute for Towns. It was only very late in the regular season that Thibodeau started playing the two together.
Towns, a five-time All-Star, is good for 20-plus points almost every night. The problem is that Indiana’s fast-paced style of play is a nightmare for him because he’s not quick, nor does he keep his opponents from attacking the rim despite his size advantage. Robinson, by contrast, is a tenacious rebounder and shot-blocker who also can guard on the perimeter, but he does not produce on offense and is a liability at the free-throw line.
So the quandary for Thibodeau has been this: Does he go with the starting center, who can’t defend, or does he stay with Robinson, who can’t score? At least at the start of Sunday's game, he picked option none of the above and opened with a twin-tower alignment.
“He’s a rebounding machine,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said of Robinson before the lineup change was confirmed before the game. "He’s just physical, he has great hands and he just goes every single time. He just has a great presence in there. It’s almost impossible for one person to block him out. So it’s a team thing and very difficult.”
Carlisle says it gets even harder when both Towns and Robinson are on the floor.
“It’s hard to start with, but you have two 7-foot guys in there, and Towns is a great rebounder, too,” Carlisle said. “And then you have Towns’ spacing and then Robinson’s rebounding, and it creates a lot of challenges.''
One of the big reasons for the change was to help the Knicks get off to a better start. Yet for all the drama surrounding the change, the Knicks finished the first quarter trailing 30-26. In each of their first two losses in the series, they finished the first quarter leading by two points.
To make such a big change before such a big game could one day be viewed as either desperate, brilliant or inconsequential. One thing is for sure: It definitely was an uncharacteristic move for Thibodeau, a coach who loves his starters. And whenever a change like that is made, no one knows how it’s going to mess with a team’s chemistry.
Still, after reaching the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 25 years, the Knicks felt they had to try to do something to save their season and not fall behind the Pacers 3-0. No NBA team has ever come back to win a series after falling behind 3-0.
Though the Knicks' Game 1 loss to the Pacers was as ugly as can be imagined, given that they blew a 17-point fourth-quarter lead, the fact entering Game 3 was that the Knicks had lost the first two games by a total of eight points.
On Saturday night, the Minnesota Timberwolves showed that it is possible to change the momentum of a series even after everyone has given you up for dead. After falling behind Oklahoma City 2-0 in the Western Conference finals, Minnesota exploded for a 42-point win over the Thunder.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
