Mikal Bridges plays 23 seconds in Knicks finale, extends consecutive games streak to 638

Last year, Mikal Bridges played six seconds in the Knicks’ regular-season finale.

This year, he played 23 seconds.

The reason?

Bridges is the NBA’s active leader in consecutive regular-season games played, a streak he extended to 638 with Sunday’s brief appearance.

With the Knicks already locked into the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference, their other four starters sat out of Sunday’s game against the Charlotte Hornets at Madison Square Garden to rest up for the playoffs.

But Bridges took the court for the opening tip-off and set up in the corner on the Knicks’ first offensive possession. As the Knicks got back on defense, Bridges committed an intentional foul, allowing him to check out with 11:37 left in the first quarter to a nice ovation.

“The streak that he has going is amazing,” head coach Mike Brown said before Sunday’s game. “And I definitely don’t want to be the one to screw that up.”

Bridges, 29, has never missed a game in his NBA career, making this the eighth season in a row that the 6-6 forward played in every possible game.

He has not missed a game since he was in high school — a run that included 116 collegiate games over three years at Villanova.

Bridges has also appeared in 57 playoff games in his NBA career, including 22 during the Phoenix Suns’ run to the 2021 NBA Finals, as well as 18 with the Knicks last year.

“It’s crazy, because load management is a real term, and that’s something that’s thought of by everybody,” Brown said.

“Not just the medical performance group — by coaches, by individual players, by agents, by family members. People push to take time off for whatever reason. So for a guy like that to be at the number that he’s at in consecutive games played speaks volumes.”

Bridges’ “iron man” streak is the eighth longest in NBA history. The all-time record belongs to A.C. Green, who played in 1,192 consecutive games from 1986 to 2001.

By appearing in all 82 games this season, Bridges moved up from 14th place on the all-time list, passing former players including John Stockton and Andre Miller in recent months. Now in his second year with the Knicks, Bridges averaged 14.4 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists this season.

Bridges played in 73 games in 2019-20 and in 72 in 2020-21, as both seasons were shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And in 2022-23, Bridges achieved a statistical quirk by playing in 83 regular-season games — one more than the standard schedule — because he was traded from the Suns to the Nets that February in the pre-deadline deal that sent Kevin Durant to Phoenix.

Brown said it was his decision to start Bridges, then pull him immediately from Sunday’s game. Bridges followed a similar strategy in the 2023 finale with the Nets, as well as last year under then-Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau.

“I’m sure he’s probably cool with it at the end of the day, but that’s definitely led by me,” Brown said. “It’s a streak that he has going on, and I want it to continue, but in the same breath, I also don’t want him to get hurt or anything like that. So we’re gonna try to be as smart about it as best we can.”