Miles Bridges leaves behind complicated legacy with Charlotte Hornets after trade
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- Miles Bridges, the longest-tenured Charlotte Hornet, has been traded to the Phoenix Suns.
- Bridges played 501 regular-season games in Charlotte but never reached the playoffs.
- Bridges will leave behind complicated legacy; he was traded 3 days after pal LaMelo Ball.
The Charlotte Hornets agreed to trade Miles Bridges over the weekend. And if you’re like me, you had mixed feelings about that idea.
Bridges was a commendable player in Charlotte in several ways. He was durable, explosive and the guy who could tell LaMelo Ball he needed to play better defense and sometimes get a positive response. Bridges was also the longest-tenured Hornet, drafted in 2018 by Charlotte and starting regularly for coaches James Borrego, Steve Clifford and Charles Lee. When other key players got hurt for 10, 15 or 25 games straight, Bridges just kept chugging.
But ... Bridges never got the Hornets to the playoffs. The legacy he leaves behind in Charlotte as he heads off into the desert is a complicated one.
Bridges’ current streak of 501 regular-season games played and zero playoff games played is the longest active one in the NBA, and all 501 of those games in Charlotte came during the Hornets’ current 10-year streak of missing the postseason.
And, very significantly, there were a couple of years where if you talked about court appearances for Bridges, you had to specify whether it was a basketball or a judicial court. He missed the entire 2022-23 season due to off-court issues and the first 10 games of the next season, too, having pleaded no contest to a felony domestic violence charge in November 2022.
The trade comes on the heels of the Hornets trading Ball — the Bridges trade became public only three days later. It is fitting that they will leave together, for on the court they often seemed joined at the hip.
It was Bridges who was the most reliable dunker of Ball’s alley-oop rainbows. No one benefited more from Ball’s accurate, acrobatic passes than Bridges did, and Ball also benefited when Bridges made up for one of the point guard’s defensive errors or when Bridges outjumped two opponents to grab a rebound and fire an outlet pass to Ball for a fast break.
Ball and Bridges were also two of the best four players the Hornets had last season (along with Brandon Miller and Kon Knueppel who are staying and will be among the anchors of the 2026-27 team). Charlotte wowed the NBA over the second half of the regular season, finishing with 44 wins after posting only 19 the year before.
Still, the Hornets didn’t make the playoffs, getting blown out by 31 points by Orlando in the deciding play-in tournament game. They got bullied in that one, showing a tremendous lack of physicality. And apparently, general manager Jeff Peterson saw the ceiling of that group that night and didn’t like it, for he’s again reshaping a roster that has undergone almost constant churn for the past decade.
In the trade agreement, Bridges goes to Phoenix for former Duke star Grayson Allen, Royce O’Neale and a 2033 first-round pick. The Hornets also had to give up a 2029 first-round pick and a 2027 second-round pick to the Suns, league sources have confirmed to The Charlotte Observer. The trade will not be declared official until July 6 due to NBA rules (the Ball trade to Minnesota will also officially be announced then).
It’s quite possible Peterson will make another big move in the next few days. We have found out since Peterson took over as GM just over two years ago that he’s a wheeler-dealer at heart, someone unafraid to make multiple high-profile moves. And as they say, sometimes the riskiest move is to do nothing at all, especially when you supervise a team that hasn’t made the NBA playoffs since 2016.
As for the Ball and Bridges trades, the early grades have been positive for the Hornets from most national pundits. But that means little. We won’t know anything for sure for a year or two.
For Bridges, I always respected that he played hard, and that when he did something wrong he would apologize for it rather than deflect the questioning (which was Ball’s preferred method of dealing with controversy).
Bridges hit a teenaged girl once with his mouthpiece when he angrily tossed it into the stands in Atlanta — he had been aiming for a guy who had been heckling him — and apologized many times for doing so. In a much more serious situation, when he came back after missing an entire season after the no contest plea for domestic violence, he said he was sorry for the “pain and embarrassment that I’ve caused to everyone.”
Once Bridges returned, he was a mainstay in the starting lineup for the past three years, playing in 89% of Charlotte’s games. He averaged at least 17 points per game in each of those three seasons. The Hornets and their fans will miss his determination and high-flying athleticism. Reporters will miss his quotability.
Let’s be honest, though. Bridges couldn’t get Charlotte over the hump. Nor could Ball.
This team doesn’t need a full rebuild, but it does need refreshing. Bridges played 501 games here, trailing only Dell Curry, Muggsy Bogues and Kemba Walker on the all-time list.
I wish Bridges well in the desert. Maybe he’ll finally find the playoffs there. But for these Hornets, it was probably time to let him go.
This story was originally published June 30, 2026 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Miles Bridges leaves behind complicated legacy with Charlotte Hornets after trade."
