The Magic earned the No. 8 seed in the playoffs and will start their best-of-seven series at Detroit on Sunday. Their 31-point win marks the largest margin of victory by any team in a play-in game, according to ESPN Research.<\/p>\n
Editor’s Picks The Magic were physical from the outset, and the Hornets were never in the game. Franz Wagner<\/a> had 18 points for the Magic, along with seven rebounds and six assists.<\/p>\n Wendell Carter Jr<\/a>. finished with 16 points on 6-for-7 shooting, while Desmond Bane<\/a> scored 13 and Jalen Suggs<\/a> added 12 for the Magic.<\/p>\n Orlando led by 31 at halftime, the biggest midpoint lead in the play-in tournament’s seven-year history. It has been utilized in this format — four teams qualifying from each conference, playing to decide the final two playoff spots on each half of the bracket – since 2021.<\/p>\n LaMelo Ball<\/a> — who the NBA said should have been ejected from Tuesday’s season-extending win over Miami for an uncalled flagrant foul against Bam Adebayo<\/a> — led the Hornets with 23 points, 21 of them coming in the third quarter.<\/p>\n But the game was long decided at that point. Orlando raced out to a 27-10 lead, stretched it to 68-33 late in the first half, and the Hornets never even got within 20 points the rest of the way.<\/p>\n Miles Bridges<\/a>, who has played more games than any other active player without a playoff appearance, scored 15 for the Hornets. Brandon Miller<\/a> scored 14 and Kon Knueppel<\/a> added 11.<\/p>\n The Hornets, who have now missed the playoffs in 10 straight seasons, were outrebounded 49-34 and shot only 34%. Orlando shot 50%.<\/p>\n The Magic were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in each of the last two postseasons and have not won a playoff round since 2010. But they went 2-2 against the Pistons this season.<\/p>\n The Hornets, who beat the Magic in their last three regular-season games, have not been in the playoffs since 2016. It’s the longest active drought in the NBA.<\/p>\n Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apr 17, 2026, 10:54 PM ET Paolo Banchero scored 25 points and the Orlando Magic built a 35-point…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-614270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/r1645360_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&w=130&h=130&scale=crop&location=center.jpeg\")
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