What’s at stake for the Hornets in regular-season finale? Here’s a breakdown
With a stinging defeat in the rearview mirror, Charles Lee knows the task at hand for the Charlotte Hornets.
“We’ve played 81 of these bad boys now,” the Hornets coach said, “and all year what we do is we watch it, we learn from it, and we’ve got to move forward. And I know that our group will be ready to respond.”
They’d better, or their chances of having postseason basketball in uptown are greatly diminished in the aftermath of Friday night’s loss to the Detroit Pistons.
Mathematically unable to climb above the teams ahead of them in the race to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament, the Hornets head into Sunday’s regular-season finale at Madison Square Garden with a simple mission: win, and finish as the ninth seed in the Eastern Conference.
That would assure Charlotte would host the 10th-place Miami Heat at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Spectrum Center, with the winner advancing to meet the loser of the game between the conference’s seventh- and eighth-seeded teams on the road at 7:30 p.m. Friday. The winner of that matchup earns the No. 8 seed and a first-round NBA playoff series against top-seeded Detroit.
Charlotte (43-38) also has another path to finishing ninth: Miami losing at home to the Atlanta Hawks, who can finish as high as No. 5 pending various results. Since the Hornets don’t have the tiebreaker over the Heat due to losing the season series, they have to remain one game above Miami in the win column in final standings to have the first postseason game in uptown since 2016.
But given that the Knicks won’t be at full strength, the Hornets have a very good chance to secure ninth. Locked into the conference’s third seed, New York is resting OG Anunoby, Mitchell Robinson, Josh Hart, Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Tipoff is scheduled for 6 p.m.
This story was originally published April 12, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "What’s at stake for the Hornets in regular-season finale? Here’s a breakdown."
