Miles Bridges stood at the rim with both hands above his head and the ball on the floor. Davion Mitchell was underneath him. The clock read 0.0. Spectrum Center had 19,444 people in "Protect the Hive" T-shirts, and every one of them had already made the call before the referees did.
Charlotte 127, Miami 126. Overtime. Sixteen lead changes, seventeen ties, fifty-three minutes of basketball, and a franchise that had not won a postseason home game since 2016 had one again.
LaMelo Ball scored 30 points and handed out 10 assists Tuesday night as the Hornets beat the Heat in the SoFi Play-In Tournament's 9-vs-10 elimination game. Ball drove right and laid the ball in with his right hand — leaning, contested — to put Charlotte ahead 127-126 with 4.7 seconds remaining in overtime. Bridges blocked Mitchell's answering layup attempt at the buzzer.
Miami's season is over. Charlotte's is not. The Hornets advance to face the loser of Wednesday's Philadelphia-Orlando matchup on Friday for the Eastern Conference's eighth and final playoff spot.
Coby White Scored 14 Points in Four Minutes of the Third Quarter
The Hornets trailed by five with 4:05 left in the third quarter. Coby White hit a three-pointer. Then another. Then another. Then a fourth at the buzzer. In those four minutes and five seconds, White went 5-of-5 from the field and 4-of-4 from three, scoring 14 points and flipping the deficit into an 89-83 Charlotte lead heading into the fourth.
White finished with 19 points on 7-of-15 shooting, 5-of-8 from three, with a plus-21 in 26 minutes off the bench. The shot that mattered most came at the end of regulation. Charlotte trailed by three with 10.8 seconds left. White caught an inbounds pass and hit an off-balance three from the corner to tie it at 114. Tyler Herro's potential game-winner hit the back of the rim. Overtime.
White, a North Carolina native who played at UNC, was playing his 22nd game since arriving in a midseason trade from Chicago. He had missed time earlier in the season with a left calf injury discovered during the trade physical.
Miami Lost Bam Adebayo in the Second Quarter and Nearly Won Anyway
Bam Adebayo went down in the second quarter after Ball tripped him, suffering a lower back injury that ended his night after 11 minutes. He had six points on 3-of-3 shooting when he left.
The Heat played the final three and a half quarters without their starting center and led for most of the fourth.
Kel'el Ware stepped into Adebayo's minutes and grabbed 19 rebounds with five blocks in 42 minutes. Andrew Wiggins scored 27 points, hitting back-to-back three-pointers in the fourth quarter that pushed Miami's lead to seven. Davion Mitchell scored 28 on 12-of-24 shooting and ran the offense with six assists. The Heat led for most of the fourth quarter, led with 8.7 seconds left in overtime, and had a last-second look at the rim. They lost by one.
The Final 30 Seconds of Overtime
Ball drove to the basket and scored with 26 seconds left. Charlotte led by five. It did not last.
Herro hit a corner three. Ball turned it over. Herro went to the free-throw line and gave Miami a 126-125 lead with 8.7 seconds remaining. The sellout crowd went quiet.
Charles Lee called timeout. Charlotte drew up a play for Ball. Ball took the inbound, drove right, and leaned into a right-handed layup past two defenders. Charlotte 127, Miami 126. Four-point-seven seconds.
Miami pushed it up. Mitchell drove the lane. Bridges met him at the rim. The block was clean. The buzzer sounded.
"We drew up a good play, I feel like, and just orchestrated it. It worked," Ball said.
Lee, in his first year as a head coach at any level, said his kids had told him he was not allowed to say "lit" anymore, "but I thought that the environment in there was exactly how I pictured it. The support all game from the crowd, the noise, the everything, the drama — we were glad that we were able to pull this one out for the Charlotte fans, because they have definitely helped us throughout the whole year."
The Box Score
Ball's 30-point, 10-assist night made him the fourth player in play-in tournament history to post a 30-10 game, joining Josh Giddey (2023), Kyrie Irving (2022), and Damian Lillard (2020). He shot 12-of-31 from the field and 2-of-16 from three — a night where volume did not match efficiency until the one possession that counted.
Bridges was the steadier hand: 10-of-18 from the field, 5-of-10 from three, nine rebounds, three blocks, including the one that ended it. Brandon Miller added 23 points on 9-of-17 shooting with five rebounds, five assists, and two blocks.
Moussa Diabaté pulled down 14 rebounds in 36 minutes. Kon Knueppel — the rookie who set the franchise three-point record this season with 273 — went 2-of-12 from the field and 0-of-6 from three, finishing minus-20 in 34 minutes.
Charlotte shot 18-of-56 from three (32.1 percent) and committed 21 personal fouls to Miami's nine. They were outshot from the field (44.2 percent to 47.6), outassisted (26 to 32), and went to the free-throw line nine times compared to Miami's 14. They made all nine. They won by one.
What Comes Next
Erik Spoelstra kept his postgame brief: "There's nothing to be ashamed of with our locker room. What you want is, you want to feel like you're worthy to win. And I think our guys felt like they were worthy to win tonight. We just didn't win the game."
Miami finishes 43-39 and misses the playoffs for the first time since 2018-19.
Charlotte plays the loser of Wednesday's 76ers-Magic game on Friday at Spectrum Center for the eighth seed and a first-round playoff berth. A win Friday would give the Hornets their first playoff appearance since 2016 — when they lost to Miami in seven games in the first round.
That was a decade ago. The roster, the ownership, the coaching staff, and the front office have all turned over. What hasn't changed is the building. Tuesday night it held 19,444 people, each of them wearing a free T-shirt, and LaMelo Ball laid the ball in with 4.7 seconds left, and Miles Bridges stood at the rim with his hands above his head, and Charlotte had a postseason win at home and one more game to play.