ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Paolo Banchero scored 25 points and the Orlando Magic built a 35-point lead in the first half on the way to a 121-90 rout of Charlotte Hornets in a play-in tournament game on Friday night and advanced to a first-round playoff matchup against the Detroit Pistons.<\/p>\n
The Magic earned the No. 8 seed in playoffs and will start their best-of-seven series at Detroit on Sunday.<\/p>\n
LaMelo Ball scored 21 of his 23 points in the third quarter for Charlotte.<\/p>\n
Banchero had 12 points and Wendell Carter Jr. added 10 as the Hornets shot 5 for 20 with six turnovers in the first quarter and fell behind 38-16.<\/p>\n
Ball was scoreless with two turnovers when he went to the bench with three fouls with 7:10 left in the first half. He did not score until Orlando\u2019s lead had reached 35 points in the final seconds of the half.<\/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.<\/p>\n
The Hornets, who beat the Magic in their last three regular-season games, have not been in rhe playoffs since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Paolo Banchero scored 25 points and the Orlando Magic built a 35-point lead in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1242,1238,2205,28,1236,139,141,1239,140,1240,110,1237,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-236737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-app-professional-sports","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-florida-sports","13":"tag-orlando","14":"tag-orlando-headlines","15":"tag-orlando-magic","16":"tag-orlando-news","17":"tag-professional-basketball","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-sports-news","20":"tag-tampa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}