Miles Bridges trade grades: Suns burn another potential rebuild year in Hornets deal

The Charlotte Hornets have been one of the most active teams on the offseason trade market, and on Sunday, they were at it again. Mere days after trading LaMelo Ball to the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Hornets turned around and flipped Miles Bridges to the Phoenix Suns in the following deal:

• Suns receive: Miles Bridges, 2029 first-round pick (least favorable of Jazz, Timberwolves and Cavaliers), 2027 second-round pick
• Hornets receive: Grayson Allen, Royce O’Neale, 2033 first-round pick (unprotected)

So how did everyone do in Charlotte’s second substantial trade of the offseason? Let’s dive right into grades.

Phoenix Suns: D

At the 2025 trade deadline, the Suns traded their unprotected 2031 first-round pick to the Utah Jazz for three lesser first-round picks. The idea at the time was seemingly that their 2031 pick was perceived as quite valuable, but could only be traded once. The Suns felt they needed multiple moves, so they split their one pick up into three lesser picks in order to give themselves the flexibility to make several smaller moves.

They proceeded to use one of those picks to dump Jusuf Nurkić’s salary on the Hornets. They used another to acquire Mark Williams from, you guessed it, the Hornets. Williams just re-signed in Phoenix, but with Oso Ighodaro ascending and No. 10 overall pick Khaman Maluach developing in the background, it’s not clear he’s one of the two most important bigs that the Suns have. Those picks, in other words, haven’t yielded much to actually turn the Suns into a better basketball team. The Jazz, meanwhile, were thrilled with their acquisition.

“The way it makes sense for us is that we now have another shot at a pick that has a lot of variability. The three picks we traded have no chance to be the No. 1 pick, and this one does,” Jazz general manager Justin Zanik said at the time. “It balances out what we want, but we’ve always talked about bites at the apple or more swings in the draft, but it also is about the quality of the swings, and this is, in my opinion, the most valuable asset on the market right now.”

A year later, Zanik was ultimately proven correct. That 2031 Suns pick was the cornerstone asset in a trade for Jaren Jackson Jr., an All-Star. That’s how valuable those picks deep in the future can be. They are among the most coveted trade assets in the NBAand are probably even more valuable now than they were at the 2025 trade deadline because the new lottery reforms expire after 2029. We literally do not know what the rules will be in 2033. Think of the two other teams that have traded picks in the 2030s this offseason. The Miami Heat got Giannis Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP. The Minnesota Timberwolves got LaMelo Ball, one of the most talented guards in the NBA. That should be the bar for parting with picks that valuable.

The Suns? They got Miles Bridges, who has always been better in theory than in practice. Despite great athletic tools, Bridges has never been a consistently high-level defender. He has shot above league-average from deep once in his career. He’s an unspectacular positional rebounder, and he really benefitted from playing in an up-tempo offense next to an elite playmaker in Ball. Case in point: his true shooting percentage over the past two seasons dropped from 60.8% with Ball on the court to 51.1% without Ball on the court, according to Databallr. The Suns don’t have LaMelo Ball at point guard.

The other motivation here for Phoenix was financial. The Suns shaved about $30 million off their luxury tax penalty by cutting around $6.2 million in team salary. That’s nice, but the Suns are still about $10.3 million above the tax line. There was some thought that the Suns would try to duck the line entirely this season, as doing so would reset their repeater tax clock. They have a long way to go if they plan to do so. That 2029 pick they acquired from the Hornets is a low-end trade asset. They could potentially use it to shave some salary, or they could also use it to improve, but based on what they got for those similar picks in the past, it probably won’t be all that helpful.

Think about the state of the Western Conference right now. Phoenix just saw firsthand in the first round that it isn’t in Oklahoma City’s universe. The San Antonio Spurs are a similarly unreachable juggernaut. The Timberwolves took a home run swing. The Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers are all works in progress, but were meaningfully better than the Suns last season. The Portland Trail Blazers might get Jaylen Brown. The Jazz are taking a step forward with Jackson.

Realistically, the Suns went from being a Play-In Tournament team before this trade to being a Play-In Tournament team after this trade. The cost of doing so was another year at the back end of this mess in which they will not be able to rebuild properly. Remember, the only first-round pick of their own that the Suns control moving forward is in 2032… because that pick is frozen due to the Suns going over the second apron in the 2024-25 season. Devin Booker will be 37 in the 2032-33 season, and without picks to restock the team, Phoenix’s outlook at that point looks pretty bleak.

The Suns are coming off a feel-good season fueled by defense and effort. It’s easier to sustain those things in the first year following the misery of the 2024-25 campaign in which the team effectively imploded with Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal headed for exits. With lottery reform killing tanking, Phoenix is not going to be able to try-hard their way into nearly as many regular-season wins, and this deal does nothing to raise their playoff ceiling against opponents like the Thunder team that decimated them in the first round. The reward here was minimal, and the risk was monumental.

Charlotte Hornets: A

The Hornets fundamentally altered the course of their franchise with the Ball trade. Whether or not doing so was wise, we’ll find out over time. But the decision was, essentially, rooted in the dual fears of capping their ceiling and getting stuck with a bad contract. Well, Bridges is on an expiring deal, so they were either going to lose him or they were going to have to give him a potentially regrettable contract. That’s now Phoenix’s problem. And for all of the reasons we covered above, they turned him into one of the highest-ceiling draft picks on the trade market.

Now the Hornets are among the most asset-rich teams in the entire NBA. They have two of those ultra-valuable unprotected picks in the 2030s between this one and the one they got from Minnesota, but they also have two very interesting picks in the nearer future: a top-2 protected 2027 choice from the Dallas Mavericks and a lottery-protected 2027 first-round choice from the Heat that becomes unprotected in 2028. They are effectively shorting four different teams. One or two of them is bound to collapse and hand the Hornets a pretty good pick. Throw in the two first-round picks they just made, Hannes Steinbach and Christian Anderson, and the Hornets are absolutely brimming with long-term upside to pair with franchise cornerstones Kon Knueppel and Brandon Miller.

The move doesn’t even hurt Charlotte at power forward. Naz Reid, acquired in the Ball trade, is the presumed starter in that slot. He’s better than Bridges, and his value isn’t tied as explicitly to a single teammate as Bridges’ was to Ball. With Steinbach coming in, Charlotte likely didn’t have minutes for Bridges anymore anyway.

The Hornets will presumably continue to use the financial flexibility gained in the Ball trade to take on bad money in exchange for draft capital. Getting such a valuable pick in exchange for only about $6 million in extra salary was a coup for the Hornets, who still have around $50 million in room below the luxury tax line with which to work. The rich are only going to get richer in the days and weeks to come.

Again, only time will tell if the Hornets were correct in getting out of the LaMelo Ball business. But once they made that trade, this one was an absolute no-brainer. This is a genuine home run, one of the best trades any team will make this offseason. Even if the Suns ultimately don’t collapse before 2033, perception can be reality when it comes to first-round picks. If the whole league thinks the Suns are going to collapse, the Hornets now have seven years to potentially capitalize on that pick in a trade. As valuable as Zanik thought that 2031 pick would be, this 2033 selection has a chance to be even better.