The New York Knicks’ 2025-26 season begins tonight. And yet already, two increasingly dreaded words new to modern NBA parlance are looming over the franchise.
The team’s injury report lists center Mitchell Robinson as being unavailable for the team’s season debut against the Cleveland Cavaliers, due to what is being described as “rest”. Robinson and the Knicks are engaging in the practice of “load management” – that is to say, selected games off so as to allow more recovery time for ongoing injuries.
Without a game being played, then, a Knicks player already is having a scheduled night off. Such is the modern way. And such has also been the story of Robinson’s career – one riddled with injury.
Knicks Fighting Against Litany Of Injury
In his seven NBA seasons to date, Robinson has appeared in only 337 regular games out of a possible 554, for a 61% attendance mark. And the trend has gone sharply backwards. Last season, he appeared in only 17 contests, a career low, and a further reduction on the mere 31 games he had managed in 2023-24.
Robinson’s issues are myriad, but for the last two years, his absence has been connected to a troublesome ankle. Procedures in both December 2023 and September 2024 on the same left ankle have been why he has been so unavailable for so long, and also why his condition requires strategic rest in October 2025 even without a game yet being played.
Ankle injuries are both regular and troublesome for any basketball player, given the speed and frequency at which they sprint, cut, jump and change direction. They are however particularly so for someone like Robinson, whose leaping ability is his raison d’être. The efficacy of Robinson’s game – and the whole design behind the Knicks giving him a $60 million contract in the summer of 2022 – is due to the quickness of his jump, allowing him to be a presence around the basket on both ends of the court in the mold of a younger JaVale McGee. Clearly, they feel that can only reap the benefits of that with a heavy amount of rest. Or, in the modern parlance – by managing his load.
The Modern Day Practice Of Selective Rest
“Load management” is an increasingly common practice, one perhaps given its loudest voice by the past few seasons of Kawhi Leonard’s career. Where once it would have been sacrilege and tantamount to cowardice in the face of the enemy, it is considerably less unusual for a healthy – or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, healthy-enough – NBA player to sit out a non-vital regular season game, so as to best preserve their body for the crunch times ahead. It is the new norm.
For said “load management” to include the season opener, though, might be a new one.
A wise one, perhaps. The Knicks will need all their depth if they are to compete for the Eastern Conference title, as will be the plan in what will be a down year for two of their most immediate rivals. and Robinson gives them a profile they do not have elsewhere. He is needed, and thus so is this management strategy for him. But the optics are nonetheless quite strange.
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