Hornets ‘comfortable’ with Miles Bridges’ return, but sacrificed the moral high ground

When an NBA player is about to get some court time and it needs to be specified whether that’s going to be on a basketball court or in a judicial court, that’s a significant problem.

That is the case with Miles Bridges, the Charlotte Hornets player who hadn’t played for 583 days due to off-court issues. But Bridges played Friday in the Charlotte Hornets’ 130-99 blowout loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, having been cleared to do so by the NBA and the Hornets while yet another allegation against him winds its way through the court system.

The Hornets said Thursday they were “comfortable” with Bridges returning to play, based on their current understanding of the facts. The sellout crowd of 19,258 fans in Spectrum Center seemed quite comfortable with it, too, greeting Bridges with a cheer/boo ratio of what I’d estimate as 90% cheers when he checked in with 7:09 left in the first quarter.

“I missed these fans,” Bridges said later. “I didn’t know what to expect. And they missed me.”

Not that the Hornets care one bit, but I’m not comfortable with Bridges returning to play at all.

It just doesn’t sit right. The whole night felt off with Bridges on the court, knowing what he is accused of doing (allegedly violating a restraining order, with a new court date now set for Feb. 20, 2024) and what he already pleaded no contest to (a felony domestic violence charge in November 2022).

You can look up the specifics if you want; they aren’t pretty.

Suffice it to say that Bridges missed 92 games in a row for various off-court reasons, and not a single one of them was because he was hurt himself. It was because he had hurt other people in some way, either physically or emotionally.

In July, at a news conference, Bridges said he wanted to apologize for the “pain and embarrassment that I’ve caused to everyone.”

Not long after that came the allegation of violating the protective order. And then Thursday, Bridges said the quiet part out loud in a group interview, the day before his first game back.

Bridges said: “I know a lot of people feel a (certain) way about me being back and I understand that. Like I said before, I have to gain their trust back. I’m going out there looking to play, and if I can get us some more wins, I feel like people’s perspective will change a little bit on me.”

People’s perspective “will change a little bit” just if the Hornets win a few more times? So sports fans are such a shallow group of folks that some more victories will make them all forget about that pesky no contest plea to a felony, as well as the current allegation?

That’s an interesting viewpoint.

But the crowd at Spectrum Center Friday night — a self-selected group of rabid NBA fans — certainly seemed ready to forgive. And the Hornets themselves seem quite happy to give Bridges, 25, this extended second chance.

Charlotte went 3-7 without him this season as he served the final 10 games of what was officially a 30-game NBA suspension, and 27-55 while he missed all of last season as the court system and the NBA sorted out what exactly he had done wrong.

I did ask Bridges Friday after the game what he would say to people who didn’t think he belonged back on the court at all. He deflected the question, saying: “I mean, I was happy for the response that I got from everybody (in the stands), and that’s all that matters, you know? I’m just here to play basketball. Like I said before, I’ve gotta gain people’s trust back. I’m just here to play basketball. And help this team to win.”

As for Bridges on the court?

He played pretty well Friday. He had 17 points, with 12 coming in the first half, and was the Hornets’ second-leading scorer behind LaMelo Ball (37 points) in what turned out to be a 31-point defeat, although it was a two-point game at halftime.

Bridges also contributed five rebounds and four assists in 33 minutes. All that was no big surprise. Bridges and Ball were the two best players on the 2021-22 Charlotte team that won 43 games but then fired coach James Borrego.

Said Hornets coach Steve Clifford of Bridges: “I thought he did great. He brought a lot of energy to the floor. He scored. He rebounded. He played really, really well.”

For those who have understandably forgotten, Bridges had played his most recent NBA game on April 13, 2022. In that 29-point loss to Atlanta, which knocked the Hornets out of a potential playoff berth and got Borrego canned, Bridges grew frustrated late in the game after getting whistled for a goaltending call.

Bridges started protesting profusely to a game official, who quickly called two technicals on him and ejected him from the game. When a Hawks fan yelled at Bridges as he left the court, Bridges lost his cool, turned around and threw his mouthpiece at the fan.

Rather than hitting the Atlanta fan in question, though, Bridges’ throw clipped a 16-year-old girl two seats over, with his mouthpiece bouncing off her shoulder and into her face.

“I was upset about a call, a couple of calls really,” Bridges said at the time. “I let my temper get the best of me. That was definitely the wrong thing to do.”

Certainly, getting mad at a ref and getting mad at a domestic partner are different things, and I’m not completely equating them here. But as the parent of a 16-year-old girl, I’ve thought about that young girl in Atlanta on a number of occasions.

She told me her age that night when I briefly interviewed her, but didn’t want her name printed. The mouthpiece lay on the ground nearby; nobody wanted that saliva-soaked souvenir. She wasn’t hurt but was obviously embarrassed about the whole thing, having simply come to an NBA game to enjoy herself. Bridges hit her with the mouthpiece just a few months before his real trouble began.

We all make mistakes. It’s worth pointing out that Steph Curry, who’s pretty much the gold standard for NBA behavior, has thrown a mouthpiece and hit a fan before, too. The NBA fined Bridges $50,000 for that mistake and suspended him 30 games for a much bigger one.

How many mistakes does it take? How many chances do you get?

I’ll tell you one thing: You get more if you can come off the bench for the first time in 583 days and score 17 points.

“I don’t think there’s a phase of the game where he doesn’t help the team,” Clifford said of Bridges, leaving no doubt Bridges will be a big part of this team going forward.

The NBA is ultimately about winning.

But the 3-8 Hornets, who have now sacrificed the moral high ground, aren’t even doing that.