Mitchell Robinson

Team: Boston Celtics · Center · Age 28 · Base role: 20-minute co-center and matchup closer

Projection card

Correction 2026-07-18: minutes raised from 17.0 to 20.0, moving the center split from 23-17 Queta to 21-20. The earlier line resolved an uncertainty the file itself flagged as unresolved, and resolved it against the strongest available evidence. With no coaching declaration, the contract is the signal: three years and $47.4M immediately after a title run is not a reserve's price. ESPN's provisional depth chart and Fadeaway World's rotation projection both start Robinson at center. He should be drafted as a genuine punt-FT target, not a late-big afterthought. Queta retains a one-minute edge on availability grounds only.

Nine-category: late-round punt-FT target; his per-minute impact can be top-100 at 20 minutes, but totals are fragile. Points: less attractive because low scoring and assists dilute the rebound/block spikes. Dynasty: win-now specialist with declining liquidity; ankle history and a narrow skill set outweigh the three-year Boston deal.

Why the line looks like this

Robinson played 60 games for New York in 2025-26, averaging 5.7 points, 8.8 rebounds, 0.9 steals and 1.2 blocks in 19.6 minutes. He shot 72.3% from the field and 40.8% at the line. That is almost a perfect map of the fantasy proposition: massive possession-ending value around the rim, very little self-created offense, and a categorical FT penalty that can matter despite moderate volume.

Boston signed him for three years after also giving Neemias Queta a four-year contract. NBA's signing report said the starting order was unclear; SI's fantasy analysis leaned Queta, while ESPN's provisional depth chart and Fadeaway World's projection start Robinson. The base model therefore treats the split as effectively even at 20 minutes and does not pretend the question is settled. It discounts games because he played only 17 regular-season games in 2024-25 following ankle surgery, continued to require ankle management in 2025-26, and then carried a full championship postseason on top of it — a mileage load the 58-game projection may still be generous about.

Sources: Basketball Reference Robinson career log, NBA report on his Boston signing, RotoWire player and injury context, Spotrac injury summary, 21-point, 16-rebound video example.

Category shape

• Elite per minute: offensive rebounds, total rebounds and FG%.
• Strong: blocks and useful center steals.
• Costs: catastrophic FT% in builds that cannot absorb it; no threes, assists or meaningful scoring volume.
• Build fit: purpose-built for punt-FT and punt-points teams. He is much harder to roster in shallow balanced builds.

Floor, base, ceiling

• Floor: another ankle interruption plus a 14-16 minute reserve role; fewer than 45 games and waiver-level totals.
• Base: 58 games at 20 minutes, enough for 8.9 rebounds, 1.2 blocks and a large FG boost.
• Ceiling: clearly wins the center job or Queta misses time, reaches 25-27 minutes and approaches 11 rebounds with 1.5 blocks; top-75 per game in punt-FT.

Risk and confidence

The line moves up quickly if Robinson is healthy for a full camp and receives the first center shift. Any preseason maintenance or recurring ankle limitation should push the GP projection below 55.

Career record

Pre-NBA: No college career. A five-star recruit out of Chalmette, Louisiana, Robinson committed to Texas A&M, followed coach Rick Stansbury to Western Kentucky, enrolled in summer 2017 and left campus after roughly two weeks without playing a game. He received a release but faced a transfer sit-out year, and on September 18, 2017 announced he would skip college entirely and train independently for the 2018 draft — the first five-star recruit to take that path. There are therefore no NCAA or overseas statistics for him; the entire pre-draft record is workouts. That absence of a competitive-basketball year is the standard explanation for both his second-round slide and the underdeveloped offensive skill set that persists. Draft: 2018, second round, 36th overall, New York Knicks.

Fantasy history: Season-end nine-category ranks are not verifiable from the sources available here, so no year-by-year finish is asserted. What the record does establish is that his fantasy value has always been build-dependent rather than absolute. In punt-free-throw formats his 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons were solidly rosterable — 8.6 and 9.4 rebounds with 1.8 blocks and a .761/.671 field-goal percentage on enough volume to move a team's ratio meaningfully. In any format that counts free throws honestly, a career .508 on real attempts is a category loss large enough to cancel the field-goal gain. The block rate is the other thing to watch: 2.4 and 2.0 per game in his first two seasons, then never above 1.8 again, and 1.1-1.2 in each of the last three. Points-league value is poor in every season — 7.5 career points and 0.7 assists give the format almost nothing to score.

Durability: 66, 61, 31, 72, 59, 31, 17, 60 — 397 of a possible 656 games, roughly 61 percent, and he has never reached 73. The causes are documented and mostly discrete rather than chronic-degenerative. 2020-21: fractured right hand on February 12, 2021. 2022-23: sprained thumb in January cost about 14 games. 2023-24: left ankle stress fracture on December 8, 2023 requiring surgery, missing roughly 50 games and returning in March with 11 left. 2024-25: offseason left ankle surgery announced September 23, 2024 delayed his debut to February 28, limiting him to 17 games at 17.1 minutes. 2025-26 was the recovery year at 60 games but still under 20 minutes with ongoing management. The ankle is the recurring theme and it has now cost him two consecutive seasons plus the tail of a third; the 2025-26 minutes cap looks like deliberate preservation rather than a competitive decision.

Trajectory: This is a career of stable per-minute production interrupted repeatedly by availability, not a career of development. Rebounding per 36 has actually climbed across the whole span — from roughly 11.2 as a rookie to about 16.2 in 2025-26 — which is genuine improvement and the reason his rebounding line held up at 8.8 despite the smallest minutes load of any healthy season. The counter-signal is rim protection: blocks per 36 have fallen from about 4.2 in year one to roughly 2.2 last season, and that is the kind of decline that ankle surgeries plausibly cause and rarely reverse. The field-goal percentage rebounding to .723 in 2025-26 says the finishing is intact, and the free-throw shooting remains unfixable at .408. At 28 he is nominally at peak age, but with 397 career games and two ankle operations the relevant curve is the one he has been on since 2023 rather than the league-average one. For 2026-27 the honest expectation is the 2025-26 shape — high rebound rate, moderate blocks, sub-20 minutes — with the games-played number, not the rates, doing all the work in whether he returns value.

Career sources: ESPN career stats · Wikipedia (pre-NBA path, draft, injuries) · ESPN on the 2023-24 ankle surgery · Daily Knicks injury history

Open questions

• Does Boston use Robinson as a regular-season preservation piece and expand him only in high-leverage games?
• Which center closes against playoff-caliber switching lineups?
• Can a lower minute load improve his games played enough to offset the per-game cut?