The Charlotte Hornets closed out the regular season Sunday with a 110-96 wire-to-wire win over the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. LaMelo Ball and Brandon Miller each scored 19 points. Kon Knueppel hit three more threes — his season total now sits at 273, the most by any rookie in NBA history and a Charlotte franchise record.
Final record: 44-38. The 9th seed. And now, a single-elimination game against the Miami Heat on Tuesday night at Spectrum Center.
The Game
Charlotte Hornets (9) vs. Miami Heat (10) Tuesday, April 14 | 7:30 PM ET | Spectrum Center, Charlotte Broadcast: Prime Video
The loser's season is over. The winner advances to play the loser of Wednesday's 7-vs.-8 game — Philadelphia against Orlando — on Friday for the 8th seed and a first-round playoff berth.
Charlotte hosts because the 9th seed owns home court over the 10th. The last time postseason basketball was played at Spectrum Center was April 2016, when the Hornets lost Game 7 to the Miami Heat in the first round.
Ten years. Same opponent.
The Season Series
Miami won the regular-season series 3-1. That is the uncomfortable number in this preview.
The Heat beat Charlotte 144-117 on October 28, 126-108 on November 7, and 128-120 on March 6. Charlotte's lone win came March 17 — a 136-106 demolition that looked like a team announcing itself. The other three games looked like a team that hadn't yet learned how to close against Miami's switching defense and half-court discipline.
The March 6 loss deserves attention. Charlotte held a second-half lead and could not keep it. The Heat outscored the Hornets in the fourth quarter by double digits. That pattern — the disappearing fourth quarter — followed this team into April and remains the central question heading into Tuesday: can Charlotte protect a lead when the stakes are real?
This Team
The Hornets started the season 4-14 through late November. Another lost year felt inevitable.
Charles Lee's system changed that. Lee, a first-year head coach who came to Charlotte from the Boston Celtics' bench, won Eastern Conference Coach of the Month in January — only the fourth coach in franchise history to earn the award. Dallas's Jason Kidd said publicly that Lee belongs in the Coach of the Year conversation.
The nine-game winning streak from January 22 to February 7 — the franchise's longest since 1997-98 — was the inflection point. Charlotte never dropped out of play-in position after the streak ended. The Hornets finished the season among the top three-point shooting teams in the NBA.
The core is young. Ball is 24 and just played his healthiest professional season — passing Dell Curry for second on the franchise's all-time three-point list along the way. Miller is 23 and averaged 20.4 points. Knueppel is 20 and broke the franchise three-point record that Kemba Walker held since 2018-19. Moussa Diabaté — waived by the LA Clippers last summer, unclaimed on the open market — is 24 and starting at center on a five-man unit that posted the best net rating in the NBA this season (+25.8 over 17 games together).
This is not a veteran team sneaking into the postseason. These players built their way here.
The Opponent
The Heat finished 43-39 and the 10th seed after spending most of the season in the top six. A late-season slide dropped them here.
Erik Spoelstra is in his 18th year as head coach. Bam Adebayo anchors the defense. And this is the franchise that reached the NBA Finals as the 8th seed through the play-in in 2023 — the most recent proof that seeding does not determine ceiling in April.
That institutional playoff experience is the variable Charlotte cannot match. The Hornets have not played a postseason game in a decade. Most of this roster has never experienced what 19,000 people at Spectrum Center will sound like on Tuesday when the game is on the line.
What to Watch
Ball in the fourth quarter. He has been one of the best players in the Eastern Conference this season — 19.7 points, 7.1 assists, a career-best in durability. But twice in the final two weeks, Charlotte's offense went dark in the fourth. Against Boston on April 7, Ball scored 36 points and none of them came in the final period. Against Detroit on April 10, the team scored 10 points in the entire fourth quarter. A play-in game is decided in the last six minutes. Ball needs to be in them.
Knueppel's floor spacing. The rookie's 273 threes are not a novelty stat. When Knueppel is hitting from the corners, Charlotte's pick-and-roll game opens up because defenses cannot leave him. When he goes cold — as he did in the second half against Detroit, shooting 0-for-6 from deep — the spacing tightens and Ball's driving lanes shrink. Knueppel does not need to score 25. He needs to keep the defense honest.
Miles Bridges as the veteran. At 27, Bridges is the oldest significant rotation player. He averaged 17.3 points and 5.8 rebounds this season. In a game where most of the roster is experiencing elimination basketball for the first time, Bridges is the one who has to set the tone.
Coby White off the bench. White's late-season resurgence gave Charlotte real second-unit scoring — 19 points in 20 minutes against Phoenix, 27 points on 9-of-12 shooting against Sacramento. If he can produce that kind of punch Tuesday, Lee gains the lineup flexibility to manage minutes in a game where there is no tomorrow.
Miami's pace control. The Heat won three of four this season because they forced Charlotte into half-court possessions where Miami's switching neutralized the Hornets' pick-and-roll action. Charlotte is at its best in transition — when the pace rises and Ball starts finding cutters in the open floor. If Miami can grind the tempo down, the season series says they win.
What It Means
If Charlotte wins Tuesday, the Hornets play Friday for the 8th seed. Win that, and it is likely a first-round series against the Boston Celtics — the 2nd seed and a team that has dominated Charlotte in the second half of the season.
If Charlotte loses, the season is over. The 9th seed gets no second chance. That safety net belongs to the 7th and 8th seeds.
The Hornets have not played postseason basketball since 2016. A generation of Charlotte fans has grown up without seeing this team play a game that counted in April. The play-in is not the first round. It is not the conference finals. But for a franchise that started this season 4-14, and for a city that has been waiting a decade, Tuesday night at Spectrum Center is the beginning.
44-38. The 9th seed. One game.
Jack Beckett is a staff writer for The Charlotte Mercury.