With emergence of Hornets and Panthers, Charlotte is no longer a sports punchline
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- If Charlotte Hornets beat Orlando on road friday, they qualify for NBA playoffs.
- LaMelo Ball fined $60K ($35K for Adebayo foul, $25K for profanity) but not suspended.
- A Hornets win Friday would send Charlotte to Detroit Sunday for Game 1 of 7-game series.
For too long, Charlotte has been a running joke of a pro sports city.
The Carolina Panthers went 2-15 in 2023, and that wasn’t even the worst record in team history. The Charlotte NBA franchise went 7-59 in 2012, a season that remains the worst in the NBA by winning percentage and one so bad that somebody made a movie about it.
But now? The Hornets are one more win away from an honest-to-goodness, legitimate playoff berth for the first time in a decade. They have to face Orlando on the road Friday night (7:30 p.m., Amazon Prime). If they can beat Orlando — and the Magic lost 109-97 to Philadelphia on Wednesday night — they’ll travel to No. 1 Eastern Conference seed Detroit to start a best-of-7 series at 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Such a series would guarantee at least two home playoff games in Charlotte, on April 25 and 27.
It’s also certain now that LaMelo Ball will be available for Friday night’s “win and you’re in” play-in game. That was slightly in doubt for most of Wednesday, because the NBA was reviewing Ball’s trip-up of Miami center Bam Adebayo on Tuesday. The incident that went unnoticed by the game’s officials in real time but sent Adebayo to the sidelines for the rest of the game with a back injury. Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said afterward that Ball should have been thrown out of the game for it.
Ball ended up being fined $60,000 for his actions during the game ($35,000 for the foul, $25,000 for postgame profanity on TV) and assessed a flagrant foul. But he wasn’t suspended and is thus available to play Friday night in Orlando.
All this postseason palace intrigue was unexpected when the Hornets started 4-14. Back then, it all just seemed like more of the same for a market that’s grown inured to the idea of frequent losing by its NFL and NBA teams.
The Panthers (still) haven’t had a winning record since 2017. The Hornets haven’t made the NBA playoffs since 2016, the longest current non-playoff streak in the NBA.
Every year people send me the same joke list they found somewhere on the Internet, with the team name changed to either “Panthers” or “Hornets,” depending on the season.
Q: What’s the difference between the Charlotte Hornets and a dollar?
A: You can get four quarters out of a dollar.
Q: How do you keep a panther out of your backyard?
A: Put up a goalpost.
That sort of thing.
This is why these past three months have felt so momentous around here. You often don’t fully appreciate the highs of life until you’ve experienced some of the lows, and our city and the fans of its two most prominent sports teams certainly know those lows.
The Hornets won one of the biggest home games in franchise history Tuesday night, edging Miami, 127-126, in a raucous, controversial overtime contest played in front of their 16th straight sellout crowd in Charlotte.
The Hornets started getting good in January, right around the time the Panthers were winning the NFC South (albeit with an 8-9 record) and giving the L.A. Rams all they could handle in a 34-31 playoff game they led in the fourth quarter.
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Charlotte FC, meanwhile, made the MLS playoffs last fall. The NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes are about to begin the Stanley Cup playoffs and will be one of the favorites after an excellent regular season. If the Hornets win Friday night, Charlotte FC, the Panthers, the Hornets and Hurricanes will all have made the playoffs in their respective sports in a six-month span — the first time that has happened.
That’s a heck of a run for North Carolina, if it occurs. It all depends on one more game falling the right way, though.
The Hornets know that they were a bit lucky to escape Tuesday night. They trailed by four points with 30 seconds to go in regulation, then trailed again by a single point with 10 seconds left in overtime.
Coby White saved them the first time, Ball the second time. The Spectrum Center nearly lifted off its hinges after both of those baskets.
But to get back there again — to make this sweet season extend for at least another 10 days or more — Charlotte has to win once more.
This story was originally published April 16, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "With emergence of Hornets and Panthers, Charlotte is no longer a sports punchline."
