Mikal Bridges says he talked to his coach about Knicks starters playing too many minutes.
Head coach Tom Thibodeau denies the discussion ever took place.
Bridges spoke with reporters about it Wednesday morning in Portland.
“I’m a starter and I’ll play a lot of minutes,” Bridges said. “Sometimes not fun on the body. But you want that as a coach, but also talk to him a little bit, knowing that we’ve got a good enough team where our bench guys can come in and we don’t need to play 48, 47 (minutes). We’ve got a lot of good guys on this team that can take away the minutes, which helps the defense, helps the offense, helps tired bodies being out there and giving up all these points. It helps us keeping fresh bodies out there.”
Bridges followed that up by confirming to reporters that yes, he and Thibs had talked about this.
MORE: Angel Reese viral for all the wrong reasons
After Wednesday’s game against the Trail Blazers, Thibodeau said differently.
“For one, we never had a conversation about it,” Thibodeau said. “The facts are the facts. When you look at our team, and the way it works, Jalen (Brunson) plays 35 minutes, and I think he’s 20th or 21st in average minutes played. (Karl-Anthony Towns), who is a primary scorer, plays less than Jalen. He’s like 25th in the league in average minutes.”
The coach had more to say.
“Your wings play more, right?” Thibodeau said. “They’re matched up with primary scorers. The way it works, if Jayson Tatum is in the game or Jaylen Brown is in the game, OG (Anunoby) will be in the game and Mikal will be in the game. When those guys go out, (our) guys go out. When they come back, (our guys) come back. We try to keep them matched up. If you look at the league, all those guys are playing 36, 37 minutes — whether it’s Durant, Tatum, Brown. The wings are going to play more. They are primary wings defenders. That’s the way it works. And then sometimes you’re caught in matchups. The Lakers are big wings, so sometimes you deal with that.”
Bridges is second in the NBA in minutes per game at 37.8.
It’ll be interesting to see if that changes at all going forward following this odd, unexpected tension in Knicks land.
MORE:
