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This time, the cheers at Madison Square Garden for Mitchell Robinson were not sarcastic.
They were genuine.
His fingerprints were all over the Knicks’ 121-113 Game 4 win over the Celtics on Monday night.
The Celtics did not foul Robinson to send him to the line and take advantage of his poor free-throw shooting like they had in the first three games of the series.
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla credited Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau for how he used Robinson to negate that strategy.
Robinson was not on the court when the Celtics were in the penalty. And he did not take a single free throw.
“They weren’t in the bonus as much as [they] were in other [games],” Mazzulla said. “They did a good job of taking him out right before. The opportunities didn’t present itself as much as it did the other [three] games.”
Without any free throws to take, Robinson was able to make a major impact on the game.
Thibodeau rolled with Robinson for nearly the entire fourth quarter — he reentered the game to start the quarter and did not come out until 1:44 left in the game. And when he did, he received loud applause.
“It’s the pressure he’s putting on the rim, and then the threat of the offensive rebounds and the extra possessions and what that means to the team and the value that it brings to the team,” Thibodeau said. “He and Jalen [Brunson] connected on a lob. I think that having that pressure there is huge for our team, and there’s not really a stat for that, but what it does is it creates advantages for us.”
Robinson was joined by Miles McBride as bench players that played critical minutes down the stretch.
McBride was on the floor from the 7:39 mark to the 1:44 mark, when he and Robinson were both subbed out.
During that stretch when both were on the floor, the Knicks outscored the Celtics by eight points, extending their two-point lead to a 10-point lead.
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Robinson played 25 minutes, his most of the postseason.
“He’s special, man,” Karl-Anthony Towns said of Robinson. “When you’re playing against him, you understand what he brings to the team. And when you’re playing as one of his teammates, you see even more the magnitude, the impact he has on the game. He was just special tonight, doing everything we needed him to do. Whether it was guarding guards, guarding their big men, or also getting big rebounds, alley-oops, timely baskets. He was able to do it all. Shoutout to him.”
Robinson recorded eight rebounds, five of which were on the offensive glass. And the Knicks finished with 15 second-chance points compared to the Celtics’ nine.
“That’s one of my strengths,” Robinson said. “That’s what I go for and I got a couple of them.”
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