During a press conference before the season started, Carmelo Anthony was asked about what he thought of coming off the bench for his new team, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Anthony laughed at the idea and now we know why—he doesn’t want to break his streak. As it turns out, Anthony is the first player in NBA history to play in over 1,000 games while starting in each one.

Anthony has never come off the bench at any time during his career and it appears that he doesn’t plan to break that 1,021-game streak until he retires. Or unless someone convinces him.

Reddit user u/Ih8reposts created a thread regarding the topic, and through Basketbal-Reference.com, we can find other players who have been starters since their career began.

The list below is for the top 10 players only:

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  1. Carmelo Anthony – 1,021 games
  2. Chris Paul – 861
  3. Kevin Durant – 742
  4. Blake Griffin – 500
  5. Damian Lillard – 435
  6. Kyrie Irving – 425
  7. Andrew Wiggins – 293
  8. Karl Anthony Towns – 212
  9. Joel Embiid – 64
  10. Jayson Tatum – 47

Surprisingly none of the retired players made the cut.

Another interesting observation that one can make from the list is that some of these players have a history of missing chunks of games due to injury. Those players are Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and Joel Embiid. This means that when they come back from an injury, they aren’t necessarily eased back into the lineup.

So, congratulations are in order for Anthony by virtue of being the first player to play a thousand games while starting for his teams at the same time. Whether he’ll be able to keep this streak going is yet to be seen, but it doesn't seem like the Thunder have any plans of doing so.