Charlotte Hornets: Was Miles Bridges the right pick?

1 of 10

LAS VEGAS, NV – JULY 9: Miles Bridges #0 of the Charlotte Hornets goes to the basket against the Boston Celtics during the 2018 Las Vegas Summer League on July 9, 2018 at the Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas, Nevada. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2018 NBAE (Photo by Bart Young/NBAE via Getty Images) /

Miles Bridges wasn’t the prospect that everyone wanted the Charlotte Hornets to take but was he the right pick for them?

The day after the NBA Draft, this was the headline in the Charlotte Observer: “Hornets make trade, avoid risk, get ‘guy that was left’ in NBA draft’s first round” Another op-ed from the Observer lamented the fact that the Charlotte Hornets skipped over high-risk, high-reward Michael Porter Jr., the Mizzou swingman who ranked #1 in the nation coming out of high school.

A thousand tweets called Bridges anything from “average” to a “C-” to an “early bust candidate.”

Sure, there were plenty of Hornets fans retweeting his dunk highlights from Michigan State and salivating over the idea of finally having a player who can jump above the rim on the team, but the response to the selection hovered around lukewarm at best. Most considered the pick to be, in a word, conservative. The “safe pick.”

So what can we expect from this young man going forward? And, perhaps most importantly to a fanbase that has been burnt by too many NBA Drafts to count, was Bridges the right pick?

First, let’s look at the other guys we could’ve reasonably chosen at the #11/12 spot:

Home/Hornets News