Miles Bridges

Bridges made steady improvement for a third straight season last year, and he was part of one of the most explosive and entertaining alley-oop connections in the league with LaMelo Ball. The biggest improvement in Bridges' game was improved efficiency. While his points per game dropped marginally from 13.0 to 12.7, the forward nearly shot 50/40/90, going 50/40/87. Aside from his 12.7 points, he averaged career-highs in 6.0 rebounds and 2.2 assists while contributing a nice 1.5 combined blocks-plus-steals. That allowed him to rank 95th on a per-game basis. Bridges also benefited from Gordon Hayward missing time, with Bridges drawing 19 starts in 66 appearances. However, Bridges might have trouble reaching the 29.3 minutes per game he saw in 2020-21. In addition to Hayward starting the season healthy, the Hornets added Kelly Oubre in the offseason, who has positional overlap with Bridges at small forward. The hope for Bridges is that P.J. Washington plays a lot of small-ball center, opening up the wing for Bridges to still find near-starter's minutes. Fantasy managers have justification to take Bridges inside the top 100, but there probably isn't much upside unless another forward suffers a significant injury.