{"id":236863,"date":"2026-04-18T12:19:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T12:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/236863\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T12:19:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T12:19:27","slug":"playoff-drought-continues-for-hornets-after-magic-win-by-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/236863\/","title":{"rendered":"Playoff drought continues for Hornets after Magic win by 30+"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">The video above is a live stream of WBTV and affiliated programming, and may not be directly related to the article below.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">ORLANDO (WBTV) &#8211; The playoffs will have to wait at least one more season for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbtv.com\/sports\/hornets\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wbtv.com\/sports\/hornets\/\">Charlotte Hornets<\/a> after the Orlando Magic won by 31 points on Friday night in the play-in game. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The loss ends the season for the Hornets and extends the longest playoff drought in the Eastern Conference. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Orlando Magic were the better team for 48 minutes on Friday, April 17, as they defeated the Hornets 121-90. Former Duke Blue Devil Paolo Banchero led the way with 25 points for the Magic. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Hornets were 3-1 against the Magic in the regular season before Friday\u2019s game. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Charlotte struggled against Orlando\u2019s defense much of the game. Hornets star LaMelo Ball scored only 2 points in the first half and was scoreless in the first quarter. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Magic on Friday night got out to a quick lead in the first quarter and led the Hornets 38-16 after the first period. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Ball led the Hornets to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbtv.com\/2026\/04\/15\/charlotte-hornets-outlasts-miami-heat-play-in-game-lamelo-ball-made-game-winning-lay-up\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wbtv.com\/2026\/04\/15\/charlotte-hornets-outlasts-miami-heat-play-in-game-lamelo-ball-made-game-winning-lay-up\/\">127-126 win<\/a> on Tuesday night in the play-in game against the Miami Heat. He scored the game-winning lay-up with less than 10 seconds to play and finished the game with 30 points and 10 assists. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The rookie Kon Knueppel continued to struggle as he was 1-for-6 from behind the arc and finished with 11 points. Knueppel on Tuesday was 0-for-6 from three and had 6 points. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Ball finished 23 points and struggled shooting from three as he went 3-for-8. The Hornets also had 20 turnovers compared to the 8 total they had against Miami. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Hornets started the season 4-14 before finishing the season with a winning record at 44-38 including a 9-game winning streak.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WBTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The video above is a live stream of WBTV and affiliated programming, and may not be directly related&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,141,140],"class_list":["post-236863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236863","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=236863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}