NEW YORK — For a man not particularly given to sentiment, the 18 syllables that trickled out of Tom Thibodeau’s mouth might as well have been a love letter.
“He gave us everything he had,” he said. “That's all you can ask of a player.”
The Knicks head coach offered that spartan highest-honor tribute Wednesday as a sort of elegy for center Mitchell Robinson, who suffered a stress injury to his surgically repaired left ankle, effectively ending his season. New York was already operating short-handed, having lost forwards Julius Randle and Bojan Bogdanoviu0107; losing Robinson, too, meant Thibodeau was down to just seven players he’d entrusted with playing time in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Pacers on Monday.