The Knicks lost Mitchell Robinson, but they may have found a cleaner fit in Andre Drummond.
That’s the tradeoff New York is staring at after a rough start to free agency. Robinson and Ariel Hukporti were both gone, and Robinson’s departure hit especially hard when he landed with the Celtics on a three-year deal.
For a lot of teams, that kind of loss would send the front office scrambling. The Knicks took a different route and settled on Drummond for one year and $3.9 million.
Drummond doesn’t bring Robinson’s rim protection, and that matters. But he does bring some things New York can use right away. He’s a strong rebounder, and his offensive game is more refined, which could help give Karl-Anthony Towns more breathing room over the course of the season.
The biggest difference, though, may come at the free-throw line. Robinson’s struggles there were impossible to ignore.
He shot a career-worst 40.8% from the stripe this past season, then got even worse in the postseason, where he hit just 29.3% on a career-high 3.2 attempts. Opponents leaned into the Hack-a-Mitch approach and used fouls to slow New York’s offense down.
That put Mike Brown in a tough spot. If Robinson was missing free throws in that situation, Brown often had to go to Hukporti, especially when Towns was already in foul trouble.
Drummond should make that problem a lot less stressful. He shot 63.1% from the line this past season, a massive upgrade from what the Knicks were dealing with before.
His career number sits at 48.9%, but that reflects a rough start: he shot just 38.1% in his first five seasons. Over his last nine years, though, he’s up to 58.6%, which is far more workable.
There’s another wrinkle here, too. Drummond also showed a willingness to stretch the floor, hitting 35.6% of his three-point attempts on 1.4 tries per game in the regular season. That gives New York something different at center and could force opposing bigs away from the paint, opening more space for Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, and the rest of the offense.
So while losing Robinson to Boston is far from ideal, the Knicks may have softened the blow with a center who rebounds, spaces the floor a bit, and won’t turn the free-throw line into a disaster zone.
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