Miles Bridges is back in the kind of spotlight that comes with facing the team that shaped his NBA career.
For the first time since leaving Charlotte, Bridges will line up against the Hornets, the franchise where he spent the first seven seasons of his career and grew from a lottery pick into a legitimate scoring threat. It’s a matchup that carries a little extra weight, even if the league has already moved on around him.
Charlotte’s connection to Bridges goes all the way back to draft night, when the Hornets held the 11th pick and were linked to several different prospects. Bleacher Report mocked them selecting Kentucky guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, The Ringer and ESPN projected Alabama guard Colin Sexton, and NBA Draft Room had Missouri wing Michael Porter Jr.
Instead, Charlotte selected Gilgeous-Alexander, then quickly flipped him to the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers used the next pick on Michigan State forward Miles Bridges, and the two teams also exchanged two future second-round picks.
Bridges’ rise in Charlotte was real. By the 2021-22 season, he was nearly an All-Star after averaging 20.2 points, 7.0 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game. He also ranked 18th in the league in offensive-RAPM, a sign of how much he mattered to what the Hornets were building.
At that point, Charlotte looked like a team on the rise. The Hornets had reached the Play-In Tournament in each of the previous two seasons, with Bridges and LaMelo Ball at the center of a young core that also included Gordon Hayward and Terry Rozier. The future looked bright.
Then everything changed in the summer of 2022.
In June, Bridges was arrested after a domestic violence incident involving his then-partner. He later pleaded no contest to a felony domestic violence charge and received three years of probation.
The NBA suspended him for 30 games, with 20 of those served during the 2022-23 season. He missed that entire season, leaving Charlotte without one of its most important players.
When Bridges returned in 2023, the relationship between player and fanbase was never going to be simple again. He was still productive, but the off-court situation remained impossible to separate from his on-court value. In 2023-24, he averaged 21.0 points and 7.3 rebounds across 69 appearances as one of Charlotte’s main options.
The Hornets, though, never regained the momentum they had built earlier. From 2023-24 through 2024-25, they won just 40 games combined and finished 40-124. That changed in the 2025-26 season, when Charlotte stumbled to a 16-28 start before closing with a 28-10 run.
Bridges was part of that push, starting alongside LaMelo Ball, Kon Knueppel, Brandon Miller and Moussa Diabaté. That group logged 509 minutes together and posted a +26.0 net rating with a 137.4 offensive rating. Even so, Charlotte’s season ended with a disappointing Play-In Tournament loss to the Orlando Magic.
Soon after that, the roster shifted again. The Hornets dealt LaMelo Ball, then sent Bridges to the Phoenix Suns in a trade for Grayson Allen, Royce O’Neale and an unprotected 2033 first-round pick.
Bridges has opened his Suns tenure with solid numbers, averaging 15.0 points, 7.4 rebounds and 3.1 assists through his first 10 games. He’s also posting a career-high 1.1 steals and shooting 56.1% from true-shooting.
Before the game, Bridges summed up his Charlotte years this way: "It was a grind," Bridges said about his time with the Hornets pregame. "Really taught me how hard it is to win in the NBA. I thought we had a pretty solid team to make the playoffs and we didn't."
That’s the story of his time in Charlotte in a nutshell. What once looked like the start of something bigger ended in a different place, with Bridges and Ball both wearing other uniforms.
Still, Bridges’ Hornets years remain the defining stretch of his career - the place where he became a starter, a 20-point scorer and one of the faces of the franchise’s most promising recent teams. Tonight, he gets that reunion from the other side.
In Other News...
Hornets' Slow Start Just Reopened The LaMelo Ball Trade Debate
Charlottes uneven start has already pushed the LaMelo Ball trade back into the conversation, and Bill Simmons used his podcast to frame the deal as something that still needs time to breathe. He and co-host Rob Mahoney looked at where the Hornets stand now, with Brandon Millers role part of the broader picture, and argued that the early read on the move is still far too incomplete to settle into a verdict.
The trade sent Ball and Josh Green to Minnesota in exchange for Naz Reid, multiple future draft picks and a trade exception, but the bigger question is how all of it looks once the season settles in. Charlottes 4-7 record has only sharpened the debate around whether the front office got enough back, and the unresolved piece around Reid keeps the discussion from feeling anywhere close to finished. [Read more 🡒]
Brandon Miller Still Has Face Of The Hornets Pressure To Prove It
Brandon Miller arrived in Charlotte as the second overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, and he has already shown why the Hornets were so eager to bet on his scoring. The next step is less about flashes and more about consistency, because Charlotte needs him to become a steadier presence on both ends while continuing to grow into a more complete player.
The Hornets have also been asking for more than shot-making, with Miller expected to sharpen his playmaking as the young roster keeps taking shape around him. Health has been part of the conversation, too, and that only adds to the pressure on a player the franchise wants to see on the floor and carrying more of the load as his role continues to expand. [Read more 🡒]
Hornets Return To Phoenix With More At Stake Than Usual
Phoenixs injury report looks far cleaner than Charlottes heading into the next meeting, and that matters for a Hornets team trying to navigate a tricky stretch with bodies still coming and going. Mark Williams is the only Suns player listed out, while Jordan Goodwin has already made his return from injury and was a meaningful factor in the previous game, giving Phoenix a little more stability as the matchup approaches.
Charlotte, meanwhile, arrives with multiple players tagged out or probable, which only adds to the challenge of keeping pace on the road. The game also brings a little extra edge because Grayson Allen and Royce ONeale are set to see Phoenix for the first time since landing in Charlotte, a reminder that this one carries more than the usual regular-season feel for a Hornets group still sorting through its own health concerns. [Read more 🡒]