How Mikal Bridges Became The NBA’s Iron Man In The Load Management Era

On Thursday night, Mikal Bridges will play in the most important game of his career when the New York Knicks host the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks are trailing three games to one, so a loss will end their season while a victory will keep alive their championship dreams.

Bridges, as usual, will be in New York’s starting lineup. The Knicks traded four unprotected draft picks to the Brooklyn Nets last summer to acquire Bridges for moments like now. They knew he was a versatile, two-way, 6-foot-6 wing who could fit in with the team. They also understood he was reliable and always ready to play.

While the term “load management” has entered the NBA lexicon in recent years, referring to players resting their bodies and taking games off even when they aren’t injured, Bridges has taken the opposite approach. He hasn’t missed a game in more than a dozen years dating back to his junior season at Great Valley High School outside of Philadelphia.

Bridges has played in 556 consecutive regular season NBA games, by far the longest active streak, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. San Antonio Spurs forward Harrison Barnes is next with 304 straight games. No other player has appeared in more than 200 games in a row.

Bridges’ streak is 14th all-time and well short of forward A.C. Green, who played in a record 1,192 consecutive regular season games from Nov. 19, 1986, through April 18, 2001. Green retired after the 2000-01 season, having played 16 seasons and won three NBA titles with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Bridges would need to play nearly eight more full regular seasons to surpass Green, meaning he would break the record in early 2033 when he is 36 years old, one year younger than Green was when he played his last game.

The NBA’s record only includes regular season games, but Bridges has played in all 55 of his team’s playoff games since entering the league in 2018. He played in all 116 games at Villanova University, too.

The last time Bridges missed a game? That was March 2, 2013 when Great Valley lost by six points to Abington High School during his junior high school season.

“Do you know how hard it is to work and not feel sick or not tear something?,” said Jim Nolan, who coached Bridges at Great Valley. “It is amazing in some ways he’s still doing it.”

Bridges Emerges As A College Prospect

Nolan has known Bridges since seventh grade when Bridges played for a local middle school. Back then, there were no indications he would even have a chance to play in college.

“He was a scrawny kid,” Nolan said. “I barely remember him. He wasn’t that good.”

Bridges spent his freshman year of high school at Archbishop Carroll near Philadelphia before enrolling at Great Valley in Malvern, Pa., about 30 miles west of downtown Philadelphia. As a sophomore, Bridges came off the bench at Great Valley. The next season, he started and averaged 20 points and 8 rebounds per game. Still, he didn’t receive much interest from major Division 1 colleges. Nolan recalled a University of Wisconsin assistant attending a Great Valley game.

“He says to me, and I’ll never forget it, ‘Ah, Jim, I don’t think he’s Division 1, but just let me know if things change and you want me to see him again,’” Nolan said. “I was like, ‘OK, here’s my card.’”

By the spring of Bridges’ junior season, he was no longer overlooked thanks to his play in the Nike EYBL circuit. Virginia Tech was the first major school to offer him a scholarship in April 2013. When Villanova offered Bridges that June, it didn’t take long for him to commit to the school, which is only about 15 miles from his high school.

During Bridges’ senior season at Great Valley, Villanova coach Jay Wright or one of his assistants (Baker Dunleavy, Ashley Howard and Kyle Neptune) attended every game. Nolan was invited to Villanova’s practices, too, and built a rapport with the staff over their shared focus on defensive intensity and movement on offense.

“We always spoke the same common language,” Nolan said. “(Villanova’s coaches) were always talking to him about what he needs to do. There were just always conversations, getting used to playing hard all the time, defending, accepting the challenge, making others better, all that stuff that we would preach but now you’ve got it from the next level and you know what? You’re going to listen.”

Bridges Becomes A College All-American And NBA Mainstay

When Bridges enrolled at Villanova in 2014, he had just turned 18 and still had more to work on, so the coaches decided to redshirt him. The next year, he averaged 6.4 points in just over 20 minutes per game and helped the Wildcats win the 2016 NCAA tournament title, the first in program history. Two years later, Villanova won another national championship, with Bridges averaging 17.7 points per game and being named an Associated Press third-team All-American.

The Philadelphia 76ers selected Bridges 10th overall in the 2018 NBA draft but sent him that night to the Phoenix Suns. The 76ers were not only the closest team to his hometown, but his mother, Tyneeha Rivers, was the global vice president of human resources for Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment, which owned the 76ers, New Jersey Devils and other assets.

Bridges only played 11 seconds in Phoenix’s season opener, but he ended up starting 56 games as a rookie and averaging 8.3 points per game. Bridges became a full-time starter in his third season. He has now started every regular season game since Jan. 28, 2020, a span of 428 games and three franchises.

In February 2023, the Suns traded Bridges to the Brooklyn Nets as part of a deal for Kevin Durant. Bridges excelled with his new team, averaging 26.1 points in 27 games that season, although the Nets were swept by the 76ers in four games in a first round playoffs series.

In July 2024, Bridges was again traded, this time to the Knicks as the featured player in the deal. The Knicks paid a steep price for Bridges, who averaged 19.6 points and failed to qualify for the playoffs in his only full season with the Nets. At times this season, Bridges has been inconsistent, although he has continued to be a mainstay in the starting lineup like he was in his previous stops.

In the regular season finale with the Knicks already locked into the No. 3 seed in the playoffs, Bridges committed a foul six seconds into the game and didn’t return, as he wanted to keep his consecutive games streak alive but also rest for the postseason. It was an anomaly for Bridges, who played at least 27 minutes in every other game this season and ranked third in the league with 37 minutes per game. Still, others with long streaks have had games where they primarily rested, including Green, who played only three seconds in a game with the Dallas Mavericks in April 1999.

While Bridges has a long way to go to approach Green’s record, he is the closet thing to an Iron Man in today’s NBA. During this year’s playoffs, Bridges is averaging 40 minutes per game, the most of any Knicks’ player. He had consecutive game-clinching steals in Games 1 and 2 of the conference semifinals against the Boston Celtics, and he’s averaging 17 points in the conference finals against the Pacers, although he has a -33 rating in the series’ four games so far.

On Thursday, Bridges will be back on the court when the Knicks seek to continue a season in which they advanced to the conference finals for the first time in 25 years. He will be playing alongside his former Villanova teammates, Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, both of whom also start for the Knicks. It may be a pressure-filled situation, but Bridges will be where he belongs, continuing his streak of 12-plus years of showing up for work every day.

“He’s an extension of what he was with me at the highest level,” Nolan said. “You find that niche of what you are, and then you exploit that. And that’s what he’s done – defense, rebounding, finishing. And then he’s gotten better at individual scoring as his time has gone on in the NBA.”