Charlotte Hornets postseason tracker: Why fifth seed is still in play
Despite falling to the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night, the Charlotte Hornets can still catapult to a higher seed and guarantee an NBA postseason home game.
With two games left, the Hornets (43-37) are in ninth place in the Eastern Conference, a game behind eighth-place Orlando and a 1.5 game advantage ahead of 10th-place Miami. Charlotte is also a half-game off the pace of seventh-place Philadelphia, trails sixth-place Toronto by 1.5 games and fifth-place Atlanta by two games.
That’s where it gets interesting.
The magic number of wins the Hornets need to reach in order to have the best chance to climb as high as fifth in the standings is 45. So, Charlotte must win its final two games and must hope the teams ahead of it lose, especially Toronto and Atlanta.
By holding the tiebreakers over the Raptors and Hawks, the Hornets would leapfrog them in the standings. Same goes for Orlando. The Hornets, however, don’t have the tiebreaking edge over Philadelphia or Miami due to losing the regular-season series to each.
Toronto and Miami meet again north of the border on Thursday night to conclude a mini two-game series. The Raptors will be in New York to square off against the Knicks on Friday before hosting Brooklyn on Sunday. The Heat play in Washington on Friday and are home for Atlanta on Sunday.
Atlanta’s remaining schedule isn’t easy: the Hawks host Cleveland on Friday before finishing up with the Heat on Sunday.
As for Orlando, the Magic is in Chicago on Friday prior to heading to Boston for a matchup with the Celtics on Sunday.
Charlotte’s next action comes on Friday when it hosts the top-seeded Detroit Pistons in the regular-season home finale. It’ll be the first meeting between the teams since their fight-marred meeting on Feb. 9 in uptown.
The Hornets conclude their schedule at 6 p.m. Sunday with a date in New York against the Knicks.
This story was originally published April 7, 2026 at 2:11 PM with the headline "Charlotte Hornets postseason tracker: Why fifth seed is still in play."
