The biggest threat to Mikal Bridges' ironman streak is his coach

You may know Mikal Bridges as the Knicks’ stalwart wing, the guy who cost five first round picks, the guy with his own bespoke three-point celebration. He’s the guy who just beat the Blazers on a buzzer beater.

You may also know him as the NBA’s ironman, the proud owner of a 539 consecutive regular season games played streak. His streak flies in the face of load management and serves as a testament to the power of grit, tenacity, and the Chipotle burrito bowl.

Once the Knicks traded for Bridges, the NBA world wondered if carnitas and guacamole could withstand the workload under stern head coach Tom Thibodeau. Thibs infamously plays his starters big minutes, and now, armed with an ever-available Bridges, he had his perfect weapon.

Bridges himself acknowledged the humor in the pairing.

The offseason jokes morphed into in-season reality.

Stefan Bondy of the New York Post recently published an interview with Bridges where Bridges politely asked his coach to consider using a new concept of rotations and bench players. Bridges explained what the oversized workload has done for him this year.

If the NBA’s ironman is asking for a break, you know something’s off.

Through yesterday, Bridges unsurprisingly leads the league in minutes played and total minutes played; his teammate Josh Hart is in second, but with over 100 less minutes. In third, Anthony Edwards with 124 less minutes; despite playing only one fewer game, the gap in minutes means Ant has played almost three full game workloads less than Bridges.

Via Stathead, I created a basic heuristic for identifying a taxing player workload by simply isolating regulation-only games where a player played forty or more minutes in that game. Forty minutes represents 83% of the total game, and no player averaged more than that per game since Monta Ellis in 2011. Simple but effective bucketing.

Even within the context his games-played streak, Bridges’ current season stands above anything in his career.

Bridges has played 40+ minutes three times as often as he did in Phoenix and Brooklyn. Every third Knicks game, he’s out there for most of a White Lotus episode. Bridges had a smaller minutes load as a Net, where he was the number-one option for most of his time on the team.

Unfortunately, Bridges is not the only Knick buckling under outsized minute totals. We can look league-wide to see how often a team plays someone over 40 minutes in a regulation game, and unsurprisingly the the Knicks are running away with this.

Amid the spaghetti of every other team, we see the brilliant blue of Thibs’ players standing a full deviation above the league. It may appear that they’ve declined in 2025, but they’ve only played 64 games so far; the share of games with at least one player on the court for 40 minutes is increasing year over year.

These decisions put an incredible strain on the Knicks’ starters, and that strain manifests itself in the accumulation of fatigue and tear. Yet, if you thought Thibs would consider changes after hearing directly from the one player in the league least likely to complain about minutes, I have bad news.

Hope Mikal’s splurging for double meat and guacamole on those burritos bowls to keep his energy up.

For more reading on this silly drama, this piece by James Edwards III at The Athletic summarizes things nicely. Nothing like a buzzer beater (in forty minutes played) to calm the storm.