Mitchell Robinson's Game 1 was supposed to be easy to summarize. Atlanta fouled him on purpose, he went 1-for-4 from the line, and that should have been the signal for New York to hide him.
Instead, the more interesting part was what the Knicks refused to do.
Mike Brown did not treat Robinson like a player who had to disappear the moment the Hawks reached for Hack-a-Mitch. He treated him like a piece that still mattered enough to manage carefully. Brown's explanation after the game was simple: Robinson would stay out there until the Knicks decided the substitution was necessary. That is a small distinction, but in a playoff game it matters. It means New York was still trying to own the terms of Robinson's minutes rather than letting Atlanta own them.
That showed up again when Brown started Robinson in the fourth quarter. The move reads like a message as much as an adjustment. If Atlanta wanted to foul, it could. But the Knicks were not going to preemptively bench one of their paint anchors just because the tactic existed.
That is the real takeaway from the 113-102 win. Robinson's free-throw weakness is still a live issue. Nothing about 1-for-4 says otherwise. But Game 1 also suggested he is not just a playoff liability waiting to be exposed. New York still sees enough defensive value there to force the Hawks into a harder question: can they foul often enough to matter without warping their own game?
For the Knicks, that is a better place to live than the obvious alternative. If Robinson can remain playable, even in shorter or more carefully timed bursts, then Atlanta does not get to reduce him to a one-note problem. It has to deal with the reason he keeps getting put back on the floor in the first place.