‘It got a chance!’ Coby White on game-tying 3 that kept Charlotte Hornets alive
Coby White shrugged a defender off his shoulder, curled around an off-ball screen near the corner, caught a pass and let it go.
And there, the basketball floated.
For everyone watching, it lingered in the air for an eternity.
For White, though, it was only in the air long enough for him to muster one thought:
“(Expletive),” he said, “it got a chance!”
But most of us are not named Coby White. So most of us experienced his game-tying shot in regulation in years, not seconds. That shot — the one that ultimately paved the way for the Hornets’ NBA postseason play-in 127-126 overtime victory over the Miami Heat on Tuesday night — hung in the air so long that you could remember everything that happened before it. You could remember White’s struggles in the first half of the game, starting 1-of-6, fighting to find a groove. You could remember White’s remarkable response in the third quarter, where he scored 14 of the team’s 37 points in the period, including an as-the-buzzer sounded 3-pointer from the wing that nearly made the sold-out Spectrum Center explode.
And then — yes, with the ball still in the air — you had time to remember the play that just flashed before you: Rookie Sion James took the ball out with 12 seconds left in the fourth quarter. His first option was to LaMelo Ball, who was assigned to run past a flare screen away from the in-bounder. His second option was Brandon Miller, who set Ball’s screen and who was immediately afterward trying to find space for a catch at the top of the key.
But it was James’s third option — Coby White — who he found. White was curling off a Grant Williams screen with his feet parallel to the baseline, and yet he somehow squared up midair around his left shoulder and nailed a shot that the city of Charlotte might just remember forever.
White admittedly doesn’t remember much with the ball in the air. He remembers the before and after of it all, though.
“I was the third option on the play,” White told The Charlotte Observer postgame. The overtime game-winner ultimately belonged to Ball, who made a contested layup with only a handful of seconds left in overtime. But that’s another story — one that couldn’t be told without White’s heroism.
“So I was like, ‘If it comes to me, on the third option, it’s probably going up,’” White continued. “And I also knew they had a foul to give. So I was either going to go quick, or I was going to shoot it. And when I came off, Grant did a great job of just reading the play. ...
“I gotta give a lot of credit to Sion in that moment of going through his progressions. One of the most underrated skills in the NBA is the amount of pressure you have in those moments to get the ball in and on time and on target. You only got five seconds to do it. That’s (one) of the hardest things to do in the NBA. ... I think he just trusted me. He saw I was open.”
What happened after that, White doesn’t remember at all. He doesn’t remember him leaping across the court to his bench and mean-mugging in front of his home state, his new city, the entire league.
He blacked out, he said, from the adrenaline that the moment jolted him with. After all, after a magical turnaround of a season, the only thing preventing another Charlottes Hornets play-in loss and early end-of-season was him — a third-option; a fade-away 3-pointer with a hand in his face; a ball and moment lingering in a collective imagination before soaring true.
“It was out of body after that,” White said. “All my teammates were like, ‘Yo, I ain’t never seen you act like that!’ And I’m just like, ‘That was out of body.’ Normally I’m just a chill guy.”
But as much as White loved talking about his shot — a capstone to a complete performance of 19 points, five rebounds, three assists and a team-high 21 plus-minus output — he also volunteered his shortcomings.
“I don’t know,” White began, when asked what made him so effective in the third quarter. “I played really bad the first half, in terms of not making shots I feel like I practice and work on a lot. They just didn’t fall. So I just wanted to stay the course.
“I try not to show it to my teammates, but I was kind of upset with myself. And I just wanted to respond in the second half, whatever that looked like. And it just so happened to look like making shots. But I just wanted to respond on both ends of the floor.”
He did. And it yielded one of the craziest wins in Charlotte’s collective basketball memory. It ranks, White said, as “probably the craziest game I’ve ever been a part of.” Add on the fact that the Goldsboro native and former North Carolina Tar Heels star got to do it in his home state, and it’s even more special.
But while White said that he shouldn’t “discredit this win,” he also knows there’s more work to do. Another win on Friday is necessary to truly make the playoffs.
For White, in other words, the ball sank through the rim long ago.
For the rest of us, though, his shot is somehow still up in the air, lingering in the cosmos, where it forever ought to be.
This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘It got a chance!’ Coby White on game-tying 3 that kept Charlotte Hornets alive."
