Ahead of Miles Bridges’ return to the NBA on Friday, the Charlotte Hornets released a statement addressing his continued legal trouble.
The statement comes after Charlotte opted not to immediately acknowledge the most recent allegations against the 25-year-old.
Bridges pleaded no contest to the felony domestic violence charge of injuring a child’s parent in November 2022.
He was arrested on the eve of free agency that summer after his wife, Mychelle Johnson, shared and later deleted graphic images of injuries she alleged she sustained during a violent attack.
Johnson wrote she sustained a fractured nose, a fractured wrist, a torn eardrum, torn muscles in her neck, a “severe concussion” and was choked until she “went to sleep.”
Ten months after Bridges’ arrest, the NBA suspended him for 30 games. He did not play at all last season, which the league counted toward 20 games of his suspension.
He missed the first 10 games of the current campaign. NBA commissioner Adam Silver was eventually prompted to address the controversially short punishment.
The final suspension accounted for the fact the league and Bridges had a “mutual agreement” for him to not play during the 2022 season, Silver said.
But Bridges’ situation didn’t consistently reflect such an agreement. He was reportedly working toward a new deal with the Hornets in December 2022 after his domestic violence conviction. The Hornets denied the report more than a week later.
