Friendship Factor: Miles Bridges' Value is Highest in Charlotte

Miles Bridges has had his fair share of controversy during his tenure in Charlotte. That’s about the nicest way you can put it.

I want to take it a step further, though, and make sure to give credit and acknowledge the fact that:

Miles Bridges' value is higher with the Hornets than anywhere else in the league. Bar-none.

Through all of it, Bridges is still here in Charlotte, kicking and clawing to help make the team that drafted him a better program than it was when he first arrived.

He hasn’t done any of that kicking and clawing alone. Well, all but two of Bridges’ first eight seasons weren’t, at least.

Bridges wasn’t ‘alone’ in the traditional sense during his first two NBA seasons – last time I checked, five guys are required on the floor at the same time – but he didn’t have his best friend until the summer of 2020.

That being one – not his son LaOne – but Bridges' teammate who wears No. 1: 2020 No. 3 overall selection, LaMelo Ball.

Ball and Bridges are as close as teammates can be. It’s their relationship, in my opinion, that’s been the catalyst for the level of team chemistry we see between the Hornets’ players now.

The kind of chemistry that leads to Kon Knueppel’s younger brother trying to dunk on LaMelo at Kon’s childhood home, because the whole team went to dinner there together.

Real, genuine camaraderie.

If Bridges and Ball were the Mentos sitting in a pack together for years, Charles Lee’s system in his first two seasons as head coach was the bottle of Coke they got thrown into to make everything explode.

What I mean by that is, Lee is a great motivator and leader of men – we’ve heard this out of the Hornets camp already. When you’re a new head coach, and the crop of players you’re inheriting doesn’t mesh? If they aren’t willing to buy into your system?

It usually means bad things for the players who don’t fit.

It’s been the exact opposite in Charlotte because their group was already meshed before Lee arrived, which meant great things for Bridges and Ball; their established friendship was a big-time resource for Charles Lee.

Their friendship was a building block for Lee, I believe. A necessary building block for a young head coach, so that once Ball and Bridges are leaders and friends bought all the way in? Everyone else would file in behind them.

Charles Lee’s system was just the bottle of Coke without the Mentos. It’s good; maybe it even tastes great to you by itself.

But that Coke isn’t going from tasting great to exploding into the stratosphere (of the Eastern Conference Standings) without Mentos to toss in there. Lee had his Mentos with Bridges and Ball already in place on the roster, and they’ve, once again, been the catalysts to Charles Lee’s system, just as the mint is the catalyst in the soda.

Had Lee brought in his Coca-Cola system and only had Snickers bars (other players, if you’re bad with metaphors) to toss inside? Unless I missed something in Chemistry class, the Snickers aren’t working.

Having the right players with the right on and off-court chemistry has also reaped major rewards for Lee in the league's view of him as a young coach…

All because Ball and Bridges' friendship and Lee’s style of head coaching have simply been the best symbiotic relationship you could ask a new young coach to inherit.

I’ve tried to focus on the Charles Lee aspect of Bridges' value being highest in Charlotte, given the chemistry between him and Ball has already been discussed by many before me.

It hasn’t been discussed ad-nauseam enough, though.

I say it hasn’t been discussed enough, because when you hear talks around the Hornets about moves that may be made this summer, Miles Bridges and his ~ $22.8 million expiring contract are the center of what feels like 90% of those hypothetical trades.

I think moving Bridges is a mistake. Plain and simple. Teams spend years trying to develop elite chemistry. More specifically, teams spend forever attempting to get high-level chemistry WITH their star player.

Bridges has that in bundles with Ball. Bridges has that chemistry with Brandon Miller at this point, too.

That MATTERS, people. Especially for a guy who took a three-year extension with the Hornets, which was declining every single season in year-over-year value. He’s likely to be cost-controllable in the summer of 2027, too.

If you’re Bridges, why would you take (hypothetically) a couple of million extra and leave what you’ve spent your whole career building? While that thing you’ve helped build, the Hornets, is in a major upswing, their biggest upswing since the turn of the 21st Century?

After all this battling back, you’re just going to walk away for a little extra cash?

I don’t think we’ll see that happen. It would almost, dare I say, be spitting in the face of the organization that believed in him again. Miles isn’t goofy enough not to appreciate that; he’s spoken publicly before already on how grateful he is for Charlotte.

Another caveat on this conversation is that the statistical likelihood of Bridges' NBA CAREER being longer if he stays with Charlotte is much higher, I believe, than if he leaves.

If Bridges leaves, it takes one really poor season, and he could be staring the end of his NBA career in the face not long afterward, potentially. If it can happen to Isaiah Thomas, it can happen to Miles Bridges – all it would take is him picking the wrong team.

But I’m of the opinion that Miles and Charlotte both already know he’s on the right team.

That’s not something so easily expendable in the pros, even if you disagree with my “passing on an extra few million” statement.

That’s a lot of money to pass on, yes, but that few extra million Miles could hypothetically take to leave Charlotte, could end up costing Miles on the back-end. If you think your career will be extended even longer by playing with the Hornets, by trying to be a lifer, you take a team-friendly deal.

Because you will inevitably get more of them, and more of them until YOU choose to retire. *Heat PF Udonis Haslem* has entered the chat.

I wrote a story a few months ago about how a 10th-year veteran, Al Jefferson, said the Bobcats – in his tenth NBA season (2013-2014) – was the first team he had EVER been on where he felt like everyone was team-first.

EVERYONE. This is Pro basketball, and this man spent 9 other seasons on teams where Jeff is essentially saying ALL NINE other teams didn’t have an “everybody team first” mentality.

That is literally insane. The average person does not realize how many NBA players actually hate being NBA players. It’s a weird thing.

I adore this Jefferson quote. It’s incredibly telling about how fragile chemistry on an NBA team is, and how important it can be to winning. More so than talent sometimes, even.

Bridges isn’t the most talented 4 the Hornets could ever ask for. They could go get someone with better stats, better this, better that on paper.

What we don’t quantify enough as Hornets fans? What I think everybody overlooks when they haphazardly toss Bridges into the trade machine?

The Friendship Factor.

You could switch Miles Bridges with LeBron James right now, playing the starting four in Charlotte, and I mean it from the bottom of my chest when I tell you the Hornets would NOT be better for it immediately.

Every turnover on defense – Ball doesn’t have to look up and wonder where Miles Bridges is going to be, or how he’s going to move on the fast break… or if Miles is going to hedge hard or soft, or go over, or under that screen.

LaMelo knows already.

Those nuances have value that you cannot put a price tag on in this league. It’s a value we don’t have a statistic for amidst this era of technology, and it’s one people don’t consider nearly enough.

Rod Boone, Hornets beat writer for the Charlotte Observer, did an “Ask Me Anything” segment on Reddit a few months ago – back during the season – and had the following to say on Bridges’ potential return to Charlotte:

“Miles is on an expiring contract so it's yet to be determined how that will shake out. But if the team keeps winning and going in the right direction, they will have to figure out where things stand there beyond next season.

“I can tell you that Miles is very close to Melo, and if he has any say, they’ll be a tandem for more than another season or two.”

Rod is hitting all around the point I’m trying to make here, so I felt it was a good ending place.

Rod said, “If the team keeps winning,” and that is an important caveat to all of this.

It’s one caveat I don’t expect to matter, though, because if this team isn’t winning consistently by the trade deadline next year, Miles won’t be the only name on the chopping block, I think.

If Bridges DOES continue to be a part of winning, what Rod is trying to tell you here is that there’s almost no way Bridges doesn’t hang around in that scenario. Not just because he’s a key cog in a potential ‘winning’ team next year.

It’s because of what I earlier deemed to be “The Friendship Factor.”

It’s the principle, my own advanced, but not actually all that advanced, stat; one which makes Bridges' value higher in Charlotte than anywhere else in the NBA.

The Friendship Factor is why I believe Miles Bridges will be going absolutely nowhere.

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