New York Knicks: Mitchell Robinson needs to start at center

While Allonzo Trier led the New York Knicks in scoring with twenty-three points Friday night against the Dallas Mavericks, it was fellow rookie Mitchell Robinson who stole the show.

In the New York Knicks win Friday night, Mitchell Robinson scored thirteen points and added ten rebounds. He also notched three assists and hitting five of his six shots.

There’s even more! He had three steals and one block on the defensive side of the ball.

Robinson has looked like the athletic big man the Knicks can play alongside Kristaps Porzingis when he returns from his ACL tear, with a rim presence and inside scoring ability Knicks fans haven’t seen in quite a while.

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All of this is why Knicks head coach David Fizdale has decided to insert him into the starting lineup over incumbent starter Enes Kanter.

While Kanter is a much better interior offensive weapon, he is a defensive liability at center.

While Kanter has played more than Robinson thus far and his leading him in a lot of statistical categories, advanced stats show that he may not be doing all that much better after all.

According to Basketball Reference, Robinson leads Kanter in categories such as defensive box plus/minus, steal percentage, turnover percentage, block percentage, true shooting percentage, block percentage, and win shares per forty-eight minutes.

Now, one might be confused as to why these stats are important and what their overall meaning is?

What they do is show that Robinson is not only a much better defender than Kanter is, but he is surprisingly more efficient on the offensive end, albeit with a smaller sample size per game.

I’m not saying that Enes Kanter isn’t a good center, because he is.

Kanter is more than capable of being a high quality NBA center. But, Robinson provides things for the Knicks that they have been missing for years.

Robinson is younger, more athletic, more efficient, a better defender, and quite honestly the future of the Knicks franchise at the five.

If coach Fizdale should be starting anybody at center for the rest of this year, it should be Mitchell Robinson.