Mikal Bridges’ consecutive games streak lives despite missing game

NEW YORK (AP)— Mikal Bridges’ consecutive games played streak lives on, evenafter he was forced to miss a game last week for the first time inhis NBA career.

Bridges wasacquired by the Brooklyn Nets from Phoenix last Thursday intheblockbuster trade for Kevin Durant.The deal wasapproved by the league too late for Bridges to play that night inthe Nets’ game against Chicago, so he had to watch from the benchand was listed as “inactive — trade pending” in the official boxscore.

But theleague determined that because Bridges wasn’t eligible to play, itshouldn’t count as a missed game. So his streak, the longest activeone in the league, reached 367 games when the Nets lost to the NewYork Knicks on Monday night.

Bridges saidhe wasn’t sure at the time what would happen to the streak.

“I wouldn’treally have cared, because I just would have been available forevery game I was able to play in. So not like I missed a game whereI could play,” Bridges said. “Maybe I’d have looked back and beenhot, but I wasn’t really tripping too much.”

Bridges alsonever missed a game in college, playing in all 116 at Villanova.Cam Johnson, Bridges’ close friend in Phoenix who came with him inthe trade, joked that Bridges was “shaking” at the idea of notbeing able to play Thursday.

“He was like,’I’ve got to get out there, I’ve got to get out there,’” Johnsonsaid.

Bridges canstill play in 83 games this season, one more than an NBA team’sschedule. He had already played in 56 games with the Suns and theNets had 27 remaining beginning Saturday.

Nets coachJacque Vaughn recently said he wanted players to view themselveslike Cal Ripken Jr., baseball’s career leader in consecutive gamesplayed, and be able to have their name written in pen in the lineupevery night.

Now he hasthe NBA’s current version of Ripken.

“Some thingsas a coach you want don’t want to think about and that’s one of thethings,” Vaughn said. “Like, you want your dudes available on anightly basis and Mikal Bridges is a guy that takes pride in that.He’s done it his whole career, so when you’re thinking about gameplanning and what’s next for the team, when you can pen a guy in ona nightly basis, that eases the mind of a coach.”