Charlotte, looking to make the playoffs for the first time since 2016, won the season series 3-1 against Orlando with all three victories coming by at least 15 points. The Magic can reach the playoffs for the third straight season.<\/p>\n
In the Western Conference, the Golden State Warriors<\/a> travel to play the Phoenix Suns<\/a> for the No. 8 seed. The Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> defeated Phoenix on Tuesday, and the next night, Golden State stormed back to beat the LA Clippers<\/a>. The winner of the matchup moves on to the first round to go against the top-seeded and defending championOklahoma City Thunder<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Warriors defeated the Suns three out of four times in the regular season. But their most recent matchup was Feb. 5 and didn’t include Golden State star Stephen Curry<\/a> or Phoenix stars Devin Booker<\/a> and Jalen Green<\/a>. Curry is coming off a 35-point performance, including 27 in the second half, against the Clippers.<\/p>\n Who will keep their season alive Friday? Follow along for all the top moments.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s win or go home for four teams Friday as the NBA play-in tournament concludes. The Orlando Magic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[118478,20519,750,7000,129,20518,6811,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-273360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-118478","tag-charlotte-hornets","tag-espn","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-nba","tag-orlando-magic","tag-phoenix-suns","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760786288_38__end_rule.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n