We can make this about the second apron, if that’s where you want to take it. We can puzzle about all the money James Dolan once sank into lost causes across so many lost seasons, and his stated unwillingness now to spend every dime necessary to bring the band back full, with confetti still stuck in their pockets.
We can talk about all the reasons beyond second-apron concerns that might offer you pause about paying Mitchell Robinson $47 million over three years — which is what the Celtics agreed to do Wednesday, luring him away from the Knicks after eight years.
He spent the whole of his time here seemingly on the precipice of physical calamity, until the Knicks finally committed to load-manage him to the hilt in order to keep him healthy … and still he showed up to the Finals with his hand wrapped and guarded thanks to a still-unexplained mishap on the eve of the biggest Knicks series in 27 years.
And those free throws … well, we can talk about how whatever charms were attached to his always-trying-mostly-failing struggle with free throws finally got awfully old when teams started following the Celtics’ lead — irony of ironies — and started resorting to Hack-a-Mitch. That was a perfectly sensible strategy that always ground Knicks momentum to dust until he could be airlifted out of games.

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