Chris Paul started a game from the bench for the Golden State Warriors, a first such occurrence since his college days.
The reason for this was the return of Draymond Green after he missed the first two games due to injury. Since the NBA began tracking games started in 1982, no player had appeared in more games and started them all than Chris Paul had entering Sunday. Including playoffs, Paul started the first 1,365 games of his NBA career.
At 38 years old, Chris Paul is the third-oldest player in the league, with only LeBron James and P.J. Tucker ahead of him. Now that Paul’s streak has ended, Damian Lillard from Milwaukee – who played his 833rd career game on Sunday night – has the most starts of any active player without an appearance as a substitute. Next on that list is Kyrie Irving from Dallas, with all of his 748 NBA appearances being starts.
Including playoffs and two play-in games, James was a sub for two games of the 1,707 he had played entering Sunday. Phoenix’s Kevin Durant has been a sub three times in his 1,156 games. Tim Duncan was a sub in three games out of 1,643 in his Hall of Fame career. Karl Malone didn’t start five of the 1,669 games he played. Shaquille O’Neal was a sub in 12 of his 1,423 appearances, and even Michael Jordan didn’t start a game on 33 occasions in his career.