Mikal Bridges’ consecutive games played streak reached 638 in Sunday’s season finale against the Charlotte Hornets, after the New York Knicks wing played all of 23 seconds before leaving the game.
Bridges was the only Knicks starter to play in the game with the Eastern Conference’s third seed secured earlier this week. Knicks coach Mike Brown said before the game he would only allow the guard to play long enough to extend the streak, and reserve Jordan Clarkson was already walking to the scorer’s table to replace him even before the opening jump ball.
Bridges committed a foul to stop play with the Knicks on defense during the first possession of the game.
Bridges’ streak is the eighth longest in NBA history, nearly 50 games behind former New York Knick Harry Gallatin. The current record holder is A.C. Green, whose streak of 1,192 games stretched across 15 seasons.
“It’s crazy because load management is a real term,” Brown said before the game. “And that’s something that’s thought of by everybody, not just the medical performance group but by coaches, by individual players, by agents, by family members, and people get pushed to take time off for whatever reason. And so for a guy like that to be at the number he’s at in consecutive games played speaks volumes.”
The NBA Cup final that the Knicks won doesn’t count in the statistics, otherwise Bridges would have been credited with playing 83 games in an 82-game season for the second time in four years. He played 56 games with Phoenix in 2022-23 before he was dealt to Brooklyn in the trade for Kevin Durant, then appeared in all of the Nets’ final 27 games.
He extended the streak at the end of that season by playing four seconds in the regular-season finale, and played six seconds in the final game of the 2024-25 season.
There were 18 players who went into the final day of the regular season having played every game.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
