The New York Knicks are just two days away from kicking off their 2025-26 NBA season with a home game against the shorthanded Cleveland Cavaliers. The Knicks are entering this year with their highest expectations in decades after making the Eastern Conference Finals a year ago and then seeing the conference's hierarchy crumble before them due to injuries.
One of the question marks for the Knicks this year is their frontcourt depth behind Karl-Anthony Towns, and recently, the team got a bizarre status update for the first game of the season.
“Mitchell Robinson (load management) uncertain for season opener on Wednesday,” reported Underdog NBA on X, formerly Twitter, citing a statement from Knicks head coach Mike Brown.
Knicks fans are understandably wondering how on Earth a player could already be load managing on the very first game of the season.
“WHAT LOAD IS THERE TO MANAGE,” wondered one fan.
“How do you need load management before the season start?” added another.
Others spoke to the recent trend of load management in the NBA as a whole.
“Nothing says the NBA is back like load management before the first game,” they wrote.
A big opportunity for the Knicks
Mitchell Robinson's strange status update aside, the Knicks have zero excuses this season to at the very least not make it back to the Eastern Conference Finals, if not further than that.
The Knicks' front office has expended countless resources to put together a viable contender around Jalen Brunson, and with Jayson Tatum and Knicks killer Tyrese Haliburton now (likely) out for the season, New York will never get a better chance than this to make it to the NBA Finals.
Adding pressure is the fact that the Knicks' roster isn't exactly comprised of spring chickens, with all of their key players at least 28 years old and seemingly not getting any better than they are right now.
The Knicks and Cavaliers will kick off their respective seasons against one another on Wednesday at 7:30 PM ET from Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.
