Clyde_Style wrote:ctorres wrote:Looking at how Robinson plays, I don't know if it is feasible to play him and Towns together. I don't get the feeling that Towns wants to play the 4 either, he wants to be the 5.
I was looking at the last 10 regular season games that Robinson, Hartenstein, and Achiuwa played last year.
Robinson averaged 15.5 mpg, Hartenstein averaged 27.4 mpg, Achiuwa played 16.6 mpg
More than likely, I expect Towns and Robinson to split minutes at center, with Achiuwa getting 3rd string C minutes and minutes at the 4 spot.
Where do you get Towns "wants" to play the 5 from?
He starts his game at the perimeter as much as any stretch big in the NBA and is essentially positionless on offense
On defense he is hardly a conventional center
His rebounding occurs out of all of that
I don't know what position KAT wants to play but it seems his advantages at the 5 offensively are much greater than they are at the 4. It opens up the court, pulls the opposing center away from the rim and gives he and the team more space to operate. He has been able to attack over aggressive closeouts , take the open shots when they don't closeout quick enough and still make great passes while controlling the glass.
At the 4 he only really has a size advantage where I guess he could try to operate out of the post more but that has not been a strength of his so far this year and would be much more difficult with Mitch clogging the paint. Defensively I don't know what KAT looks like at the 4 for the Knicks since Thibs has refused to play him at the 4 next to Sims or Huk which is a bit odd since he has been running the wings into the ground playing the 2-4 spots.
I still assume Thibs will attempt KAT and Mitch together for short stretches but I could also see him just reducing KAT's minutes a little and just giving the Mitch the backup 5 minutes without KAT on the court. Also i'm not sure I like the idea of paying KAT $50-60M to be a stretch 4 with average defense in a league full of stretch 4's. I'm curious if the defensive gains of Mitch at the 5 will outweigh the offensive losses. Either way the return of Mitch does give the team more flexibility.