Miles Bridges is a member of the Hornets again. How long he stays may be up to him
A quick glance at Instagram alleviated any uncertainty about the mindset of the Charlotte Hornets’ first free agency signee of the summer.
After Sunday’s news broke that Miles Bridges was going the route that not many players opt to travel, the former restricted free agent made it perfectly clear he wasn’t the least bit upset. In fact, despite not getting the lucrative long-term deal he was hoping for and having to settle on taking a calculated risk, Bridges exuded excitement about his impending return to the NBA after signing his $7.9 million qualifying offer.
He’s back, getting ready to form a tag team again with his good buddy LaMelo Ball, looking to revisit the days of AirBnB. And he’s taking a calculated risk after not coming to terms on a multi-year deal with the Hornets, pushing all his chips into the middle of the table in a huge gamble on himself.
By choosing to play the 2023-24 campaign on a one-year deal, Bridges’ margin of error will be thinner than a piece of loose leaf. Everything on and off the court has to turn out masterfully, and that could be asking a lot, because of the unprecedented nature of his circumstances.
For months, people familiar with the Hornets’ situation had trouble predicting the final outcome, pointing out how there’s no manual or blueprint for navigating Bridges’ situation.
And while some are surely happy to have Bridges in the fold once more, deep down the Hornets can’t be too pleased that it’s come to this. They weren’t about to hand Bridges a multi-year deal that came anywhere close to the $20 million per season he was ticketed for a year ago, prior to his arrest.
The Hornets knew Bridges taking the qualifying offer was a possibility. That Bridges can leave on his own terms, six years into his career as a pro — which is unusual in the NBA for lottery picks unless they weren’t extended qualifying offers by their respective teams — has to be a little disappointing.
Either way, it makes Bridges’ decision all the more intriguing, putting pressure on him to produce in a variety of ways. At the very top: He has to stay out of trouble, because he’s lost the benefit of the doubt in the court of public opinion. The smallest incident will become a big deal, leading to the detractors wagging fingers and screaming that should be yet another reason why he shouldn’t be in the NBA.
Then, there’s the other thing that’s a pretty big necessity for this to work out for Bridges in the end. He has to prove he hasn’t lost a step and his game is at the same level it was heading into the 2022-23 offseason. That’s an awfully difficult proposition — and probably not realistic — no matter how much training took place over the past 12 months.
Simulating actual 5-on-5 NBA action is impossible, and Bridges is also going to be at a disadvantage when his suspension is complete and returns 11 games into the season, forcing him to play catch-up for weeks until his conditioning is where it should be.
Besides all that, he still needs a robust market, big enough for multiple teams to vie for his services. There wasn’t much out there for him over the initial two days of wheeling and dealing around the league, which shouldn’t have been a shock.
But now that he’ll be suiting up with Charlotte again, there’s still so much that needs to be sorted out. And none of it is going to happen right away, which will create even more intrigue than usual with the Hornets.
At the moment, the Hornets’ roster remains in flux, especially with PJ Washington unsigned, and until it’s truly set and it’s clear where things stand with the Hornets’ suddenly overcrowded wing position, it’s too early to make any declarative statements.
But there’s little doubt coach Steve Clifford would rather have that problem than the hand he got dealt a year ago, coming on board mere days before things got turned upside down with the Hornets’ offseason plans following Bridges’ arrest.
There was a hole in the roster in Clifford’s first season, both physically and mentally, and it wound up costing the Hornets during a mostly-forgettable injury-ravaged seven month span. They were a different team without the same athletic plays that Bridges brought to the table, and his next payday hinges on him proving his worth to the Hornets and everybody else over these next 12 months. Because it remains to be seen how many teams will be comfortable backing up the armored truck and unloading millions into a contract for Bridges.
Watching it all unfold just added even more suspense to what’s slowly already shaping up to be a very compelling 2023-24 season in Charlotte, one that will be the first franchise’s new majority ownership.
This story was originally published July 3, 2023 at 4:52 PM.
