Miles Bridges is officially a Phoenix Sun, and he didn’t leave Charlotte without saying something first.
The Hornets traded their longtime power forward to Phoenix over the weekend, sending him out in a deal that brought back Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale. Bridges was in the final year of his contract, and Charlotte decided to move on rather than risk losing him for nothing in free agency. That kind of math isn’t personal, but the goodbye letter Bridges posted on Instagram sure felt that way.
He wrote that he’ll never forget the night he was drafted to Charlotte in 2018. He thanked the coaches, the staff, the front office, his teammates and the fans. He said the city and the whole state of North Carolina made him feel at home from day one.
“Thank you for believing in me, supporting me, and making Charlotte feel like home. This city will always hold a special place in my heart, and I’ll carry these memories with me wherever I go. Always love, Miles,” Bridges wrote.
And that was it. Short, sincere and probably tough to type out.
Bridges spent his entire career in Charlotte up to this point. The Hornets originally got him in a draft-night trade with the Clippers back in 2018. He played seven seasons with the team, missing the entire 2022-23 season because of his legal issues related to a domestic violence case. That history makes him a divisive figure around the league, but inside the Hornets locker room his teammates embraced him as one of the leaders.
In seven seasons he averaged 17.1 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists. Those are solid numbers for a forward who got better every year he was healthy.
Now he joins a Suns team that already has Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal. That’s a lot of firepower on paper, but Phoenix has been looking for more athleticism and depth on the wing. Bridges gives them exactly that. He’s 28 years old, athletic as hell and has playoff experience from Charlotte’s two play-in appearances.
As for the Hornets, they got a couple useful pieces back in Allen and O’Neale. Both can shoot, both defend and both are on contracts that give Charlotte some flexibility. It’s not a splashy return, but it’s a practical one for a team that’s still figuring out what its next competitive window looks like.
Bridges is gone now. The city that drafted him and stuck with him through the bad years and the worse ones gets to watch him try to win somewhere else. And for a guy whose time in Charlotte was complicated at best, his goodbye couldn’t have been simpler.
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