{"id":128282,"date":"2025-03-12T16:43:49","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T20:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=128282"},"modified":"2025-03-12T16:43:49","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T20:43:49","slug":"mikal-bridges-tom-thibodeau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/12\/mikal-bridges-tom-thibodeau\/","title":{"rendered":"Mikal Bridges Asked Tom Thibodeau for Fewer Starters&#8217; Minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who follows basketball knows at least one thing about New York Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau: he loves to play his best guys&#8217; heavy minutes. It&#8217;s been no different this year, with each of New York&#8217;s five starters playing 35.1 minutes per game or more. In fact, <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/h\/hartjo01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Josh Hart<\/a> and <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bridgmi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mikal Bridges<\/a> are <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.statmuse.com\/nba\/ask\/nba-minutes-per-game-leaders-this-season\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tied for first in the NBA<\/a> at an astounding 37.8 minutes a night. The heavy burdens these guys have carried have been a hot topic of conversation, with some even calling for Thibodeau to be fired if he doesn&#8217;t change his ways. Critics cite New York&#8217;s injury bug costing them their season last year when the team completely broke down in the playoffs, leading to a premature second-round exit. Well, one of those starters might feel the same way. Let&#8217;s dive into Mikal Bridges&#8217; recent comments.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Mikal Bridges Asked Tom Thibodeau for Fewer Starters&#8217; Minutes<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Stefan Bondy of the New York Post reports that Knicks wing Mikal Bridges implored Thibodeau to lower the starters&#8217; minutes. Apparently, Bridges feels this way for two reasons. One is the toll it takes on a player&#8217;s body to stay out there for 40-plus minutes regularly. Despite being the league&#8217;s most durable player, Bridges says he can feel the wear and tear. The cumulative effect of that could be detrimental to their playoff success.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Mikal Bridges says he&#39;s asked Tom Thibodeau to back off a bit on the starters minutes because the bench deserves more.<\/p>\n<p>Read details here: <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/49tyOIXVSb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/49tyOIXVSb<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Stefan Bondy (@SbondyNBA) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SbondyNBA\/status\/1899910495798517991?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 12, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Secondly, New York&#8217;s bench has played well of late and should get an extended run when they&#8217;re in a groove. Even <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mcbrimi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Miles McBride<\/a>, who is now starting in place of <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/brunsja01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jalen Brunson<\/a>, hasn&#8217;t gotten nearly as much playing time as he should when the lineup was healthy. <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/p\/payneca01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cameron Payne<\/a> and <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/s\/shamela01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Landry Shamet<\/a> have been excellent in recent games, and Thibodeau needs to recognize when they&#8217;re in rhythm and capitalize on the chance to get starters more rest. Once <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/r\/robinmi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mitchell Robinson<\/a>&#8216;s minutes restriction is lifted, he should also see 25-plus minutes a night. Overall, the Knicks have plenty of bench players they could give more opportunities to.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>The Regular Season is Meaningless<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The biggest reason why the minutes issue is frustrating for fans, and now Bridges, is that the results of the final 18 games simply aren&#8217;t that important. That&#8217;s not to say the Knicks shouldn&#8217;t play hard every night and try to win. Building winning habits together is important for a squad&#8217;s culture and will reveal itself in the playoffs. However, each individual outcome is essentially meaningless for New York&#8217;s postseason outlook. NY is five games ahead of Indiana, Milwaukee, and Detroit for the third seed and 5.5 behind Boston for the second seed. With 18 games left, they&#8217;re almost certainly locked into third. Furthermore, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/10\/knicks-fourth-seed\/\" target=\"_self\">falling to four<\/a> wouldn&#8217;t be a bad thing as Cleveland may be an easier second-round matchup than Boston.<\/p>\n<p>So, with the rest of the campaign solely about finding their winning playoff formula, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/20\/knicks-injury-josh-hart-tom-thibodeau\/\" target=\"_self\">rest is a priority<\/a>. Although New York has been one of the league&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/04\/nba-injuries-quieting-tom-thibodeaus-minutes-police\/\" target=\"_self\">healthiest teams despite heavy minutes<\/a>, they have several players banged up. <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/a\/anunoog01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">OG Anunoby<\/a>, <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/t\/townska01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Karl-Anthony Towns<\/a>, and Hart are nursing nagging injuries. Brunson will be coming off a serious ankle injury when he returns. The key is to make sure the entire rotation makes it to mid-April as healthy as possible. It&#8217;s not to win as many of the final 18 games as possible. Knicks fans can only hope Thibodeau heeds Bridges&#8217; call.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: \u00a9 Alonzo Adams-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who follows basketball knows at least one thing about New York Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau: he loves to play his best guys&#8217; heavy minutes. It&#8217;s been no different this year, with each of New York&#8217;s five starters playing 35.1 minutes per game or more. In fact, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges are tied [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5412,"featured_media":128292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,62,12],"tags":[1484,215],"class_list":["post-128282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba","category-knicks","tag-mikal-bridges","tag-tom-thibodeau"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5412"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128282"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128293,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128282\/revisions\/128293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}