Why Miles Bridges is as motivated as anyone to end Hornets’ playoff drought
Sweat still apparent from a completed shooting session before hopping on the team plane, Miles Bridges is all business.
The look on the veteran Charlotte Hornets forward is no different than some 36 hours before, when he was a key force in helping lift his team past Miami. He’s almost possessed by the task at hand, exuding laser-like vision on what’s staring directly at the Hornets.
“Yeah, it’s desperation,” Bridges said Thursday, “desperation at this point. Win or go home. So, you’ve got to play with that type of sense of urgency and that type of energy and focus. I’ve been waiting for my whole for this.”
As in being on the brink of the time of year when legends are made, piggybacking on the bright lights and national — and global — attention that comes along with it.
With 501 career regular-season games played, Bridges is alone at the top of a list he’s hoping to leapfrog off: He’s played in the most games without making it to the actual postseason, a trend that can finally be reversed if the Hornets upend the Orlando Magic at Kia Center on Friday night in an NBA play-in tournament game, where the victor earns the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed.
“You try not to think about it too much, but at the same time, like I said, I want to be focused,” Bridges said. “I want to be locked in and give 100 percent. I don’t want to leave nothing on the table.”
In other words, continue heeding the same mantra he has for the better part of his seventh season.
Bridges came up huge in the Hornets’ win over Miami on Tuesday, pumping in 28 points and swiping nine rebounds. He also had the game-clinching block on Davion Mitchell at the buzzer to seal it for Charlotte, effectively getting it done on both ends.
And it didn’t go unnoticed.
“To me, as soon as the game started, he looked hungry,” Coby White said. “You could tell it was one of those things, he was tired of being labeled whatever that media and people trying to label him as. You can just tell he’s obviously been here the longest, so he’d been through the lowest set of lows and you could tell he was sick of it by the way that he played on both ends of the floor. I’m super proud of him.
White mentioned how Bridges welcomed him openly when he was traded to Charlotte from the Chicago Bulls in February just prior to the deadline.
“He was one of the first people when I first got here, I remember after one of the games, my family was so appreciative that he stopped and said hello to them and gave my mom a hug,” White said. “And that just shows the character that he has as a man, as a person. So I’m just super happy for him.”
The addition of Kon Knueppel, along with a healthy Brandon Miller and LaMelo Ball, has led to a shift in roles for Bridges. He’s no longer one of the top offensive options and has to often find his points in a variety of ways since he’s dropped down in the pecking order.
Bridges has happily accepted the schematic change, which consists of him exploiting mismatches, rebounding, and recognizing when to step up versus defer to teammates. He’s also tried to elevate himself defensively, often guarding opponents’ best players.
That’ll be the case against Orlando when he’s matched up with the likes of Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero, a task that will require Bridges to keep the Magic duo out of the paint. But he intends on being a handful, too, using his skill set to create opportunities for others.
“If I get a mismatch, then they are going to have to leave somebody,” Bridges said. “Whether it’s Moussa (Diabate) under the rim, Melo, Kon or Brandon, you don’t want to leave any of them. So that gives them an open shot. We’re an unselfish team where swing, swing get to a 3-pointer. So, it just makes it easy for anybody.”
And Miller is appreciative.
“Definitely,” Miller said. “He takes on the best players every night, whether he’s switched on to them. But I think a lot of emphasis that we put on this year was his ability to post up on mismatches. A lot of teams have smaller guards. I think Miles is a guy that we can go to just to see a bucket go in because we know that we’re confident in that post up shot.
“So having mismatches like that on the floor can kind of open up the game for everybody else as far as teams don’t want to help off of shooters, of course — Kon, Melo or Coby. So just having a guy like that that knows the game, I think that helps out everybody.”
In turn, Bridges hopes it leads to the end of the unwanted streak and the Hornets punching their first NBA playoff ticket since 2016. Their reward would be a date with the Detroit Pistons in a best-of-seven first-round series that begins on Sunday at Little Caesars Arena.
That’s only about an hour’s drive from where Bridges grew up in Flint, Mich.
“No, that would be crazy,” Bridges said. “God works in mysterious ways. I don’t make the playoffs for eight years and if I do, I find myself playing against my hometown team. So, that would be great for me. But at the same time, we’ve still got business to handle before then. But that would be great for me.”
This story was originally published April 17, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Why Miles Bridges is as motivated as anyone to end Hornets’ playoff drought."
