Category: Sports News

It’s win or stay home (to play the Hornets) for the Sixers when they host the Orlando Magic in the East’s 7-8 Play-In game Wednesday night.

After Charlotte’s thrilling overtime win Tuesday night, we know what’s at stake in this one: the winner of Sixers-Magic will head to Boston for a playoff matchup with the Celtics starting Sunday afternoon. The loser will host the Hornets Friday with one last chance to make the postseason and take on the top-seeded Detroit Pistons.

Both teams come into this one in weird places.

The Magic made a huge splash this past offseason to acquire Desmond Bane from the Memphis Grizzlies. The thought was Bane could be an ideal complement to Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner. Orlando became a trendy pick to potentially win the Eastern Conference. Between injuries and inconsistencies, the team never truly took off this season. Their regular season culminated in a loss to the Hospital Celtics, which cost the Magic the opportunity to host this game instead of heading to South Philly.

The trio of Bane, Banchero and Wagner is still a dangerous one. Any of them could go off and have a big scoring night. Their top reserve, Anthony Black, had a strong regular season and was excellent against the Sixers this season. The biggest challenge for the Sixers will be contending with the Magic’s size, but with Paul George, Kelly Oubre Jr. and Dominick Barlow all healthy, they should be able to handle it.

Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe will be one of the most dangerous backcourts in the NBA playoffs (if they make it there). They face a stiff test tonight from the dogged Jalen Suggs and Bane. We’ll see how Maxey and his strained pinky tendon fare with those two aggressive guards swiping at it all night.

The center position might be the X-factor in this one. With Joel Embiid still out, Andre Drummond and Adem Bona will be the only true bigs available for the Sixers. The guess here is Drummond gets the starting nod based off his experience and Orlando’s aforementioned size. The good news for the Sixers is the Magic don’t have a true stretch big option. Wendell Carter Jr. will shoot threes, but he made just 31.9% on the season. However, both Carter and backup Goga Bitadze average over two offensive rebounds a game — and we all know about the Sixers’ issues there.

This game has serious rock fight potential. Neither squad is a great three-point shooting team. The Sixers hold a slight advantage there with Maxey, George, Edgecombe and Oubre all being legitimate threats from deep this season. And don’t forget about Drummond entering his Splash Mountain era.

Without Embiid, this will be a difficult matchup for the Sixers, but it’s a winnable game. The Magic are in a weird place after a disappointing regular season with plenty of questions surrounding the job security of head coach Jamahl Mosley. It might behoove the Sixers to jump on Orlando early by forcing turnovers and getting out and on the break.

Aside from Embiid, the Sixers will still be without rookie big Johni Broome. Trendon Watford is considered probable with an illness. For the Magic, Jonathan Isaac (left knee sprain) and Jett Howard (left ankle sprain) are questionable. The health of Wagner, who’s still battling back from a high left ankle sprain, is also worth monitoring.

Game Details

When: Wednesday, April 15, 7:30 PM ET
Where: Xfinity Mobile Arena, Philadelphia, PA
Watch: Amazon Prime
Radio: 97.5 The Fanatic
Follow: @LibertyBallers

The luxury of securing the 2-seed is a comfy view from the top. While the Boston Celtics spent the final weeks of the regular season fine-tuning rotations and monitoring their health, the lower tier of Eastern Conference playoff teams were in a chaotic sprint toward the finish line.

The 5 through 10 seeds shuffled around all season, and now, with the dust settled, the Sixers and Magic find themselves in the Play-In.

On Wednesday, Philadelphia and Orlando will face off in the 7/8 game. The winner gets a date with Boston in Round 1. The loser gets one more chance to stay alive, with Detroit waiting.

For the Celtics, waiting on their matchup is familiar territory — and so are their two options. The Magic and Sixers are on different timelines, but they’ve ended up in a similar place statistically.

They rank 17th and 18th in net rating — Orlando at +0.6, Philadelphia at -0.1. On paper, it’s a coin flip. The injury picture says otherwise.

If it’s the Magic

Boston already knows what Orlando looks like up close. The Celtics beat them in five games in last year’s first round. The series was never seriously in doubt, but the Magic were physical enough to leave a mark. They made every possession feel like work, and Tatum missed a game because of it.

That memory is real, but the season finale offered a more comfortable preview of what a rematch might look like.

Watching Boston’s bench take it to Orlando’s starters and come away with a win matters. The Celtics didn’t have much to play for beyond pride, while Orlando was still jockeying for seeding. The loss dropped the Magic below the Sixers, forcing them onto the road for the Play-In.

This year’s version of Orlando hasn’t quite taken the leap many expected, but the core challenges are still there. Franz Wagner missed a significant chunk of the season with a high ankle sprain, playing just 34 games, but he’s had a few outings in April to get his legs back. He’s worth watching closely — Orlando’s net rating swings +4.9 with him on the floor, the largest individual impact on the roster.

As a duo, he and Paolo Banchero still haven’t consistently translated their talent into positive results. The pairing often comes back negative when they share the floor. The shot-making and self-creation are obvious, but the connection between them hasn’t fully clicked.

The Magic’s identity hasn’t really changed. They’re built on defense and physicality, and they can turn half-court offense into a grind. Desmond Bane adds another layer of offensive versatility, and Anthony Black has taken a step forward across the board.

There’s great size and length in Orlando’s creators, and that can cause problems in a playoff setting. Boston, though, is one of the teams most equipped to match that with its own wing depth. It becomes less about stopping them, and more about whether Orlando can consistently generate efficient offense against a defense built to handle that profile.

If it’s the Sixers

Philadelphia is the more manageable problem on paper — and it starts with Joel Embiid not being available.

The Sixers’ center underwent an emergency appendectomy late in the season and has reportedly not been around the team since. Without him, the foundation of their offense shifts dramatically. With Embiid on the floor, Philadelphia’s offensive rating sits at 121.2. Without him, it drops to 114.1 — a seven-point-per-100-possession decline that strips away the interior presence, short-roll playmaking, and gravitational pull that opens everything else up.

The ripple effects show up everywhere. Three-point percentage falls from 37.8% to 33.6% with him off the floor, a reflection of how much more difficult the game becomes for their perimeter creators.

What remains is the Tyrese Maxey show, and that’s a more volatile experience than his numbers might suggest.

Maxey plays at a speed that forces decisions before a defense is set. He’s the type of guard who turns a made Celtics basket into a layup on the other end before the defense can get organized. He finished the season at 28.3 points and 6.6 assists, with the ability to decelerate into floaters and pull-up threes that make him difficult to stay in front of.

That quick-twitch style presents a different kind of challenge than Orlando’s size. It’s less about absorbing contact and more about containing pace and decision-making.

The playoff reality, though, is that Boston gets to simplify things without Embiid. No interior threat to account for means they can focus on keeping Maxey in front and forcing the rest of the roster to prove it can beat them. He can swing a game, but carrying that burden across four wins against Boston’s perimeter defense is a different ask entirely.

Wednesday’s game feels like a toss-up, and the regular season meetings don’t offer a clean answer either. Philadelphia took two of three from Orlando, but the results swung wildly, including a 40-point loss in November.

Boston isn’t running from either matchup, and they’ll be favored either way. But the questions they ask are different. Orlando brings size, physicality, and a defense that can drag a series into the mud. Philadelphia, without Embiid, leans almost entirely on Maxey’s burst and shot creation to sustain anything over seven games.

One of those problems is harder to solve than the other.

If there’s a preference, it starts there.

Amazon Prime said the technical difficulty during its stream of the Hornets-Heat Play-In Tournament game was caused by “a hardware failure in our production truck” on Thursday night.

“The broadcast of the Miami Heat at Charlotte Hornets experienced a temporary disruption due to a hardware failure in our production truck,” an Amazon spokesperson said, per ESPN. “Our teams restored the feed as quickly as possible to ensure fans could watch the conclusion of the game. We are conducting a thorough internal review to determine the cause of the outage.”

The feed cut out as the game resumed after a timeout with the Hornets leading the Heat 125-120 and 48.1 seconds remaining in overtime.

The blackout lasted for nearly two minutes, causing fans to miss 22.1 seconds of playing time and a Hornets possession.

A message that said “technical difficulties” was displayed afterward, leaving viewers on a cliffhanger during the Play-In thriller — including Lakers superstar LeBron James.

“Tell me the game didn’t just cut off?!!? Am I trippin?? WTH,” James wrote on X.

The Hornets went on to win 127-126 and eliminated the Heat from the postseason in the NBA’s first of six Play-In games.

The matchup between the East’s ninth-and-10th-ranked teams had no shortage of thrilling moments, including 16 lead changes and 17 ties.

The Heat remained in the game despite losing star big man Bam Adebayo to a lower back injury in the second quarter after being tripped by Charlotte point guard LaMelo Ball.

Adebayo did not return to the game.

Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said in his post-game press conference that Ball should’ve been ejected after the incident.

After the Hornets win, Ball said it wasn’t intentional and that he was going to check in on Adebayo.

Prime Video has exclusive rights to all six games in this year’s Play-In Tournament.

The San Antonio Spurs are in the playoffs for the first time since 2019 as the 2nd seed in the West, and after last night’s Play-In Tournament games, we know their first round opponent. In a weird scheduling idea that had many people confused, the East 9 vs. 10 game was first — with the Hornets eliminating the Heat in a dramatic game, complete with a controversial missed call that should have seen LaMelo Ball ejected early for tripping and injuring Bam Adebayo — followed by the West 7 vs. 8 game: the Phoenix Suns vs. the Portland Trail Blazers.

In a game whose win probability chart looks like a sinusoidal wave, with the Suns leading much of the first and fourth quarter while the Blazers owned the second and third, it was looking like the Suns would pull it out, leading by as much as 11 with 6:41 left before Portland made the comeback. A three from Jerami Grant gave the Blazers their first lead of the fourth quarter with just under two minutes to go before things went back and forth as Devin Booker tried to guide his team to the finish line.

Unfortunately, a couple of turnovers cost Phoenix the game, and two Deni Avdija free throws and a Grant dunk off a steal with 4.5 seconds left sealed the 114-110 victory for Portland, securing their spot as the 7th seed in the West and as the Spurs’ first round opponent. The Suns will go on to face the winner of the West’s 9 vs. 10 matchup between the Clippers and Warriors in a battle for the 8th seed and the right to face the Thunder in round 1.

The Spurs went 2-1 against Portland in the regular season, with all three being relatively close games. The Spurs won the most recent game last week 112-101 without Victor Wembanyama, who had suffered a bruised rib in the previous game. While perhaps a less daunting opponent than the Suns in the sense that they lack explosive offensive players like Booker or Jalen Green, the are still a big, strong, physical team with an All-Star forward in Avdija. They also have many similarities with the Spurs, with their young core being inexperienced in the playoffs, but they still have vets with championship experience, like Jrue Holiday, to guide them.

It will also be a clash of two coaches making their playoff debut in Mitch Johnson and former Spurs champion Tiago Splitter, who both ended up stepping into the role unexpectedly: Johnson after Gregg Popovich suffered stroke last season, and Splitter after Chauncey Billups was placed on indefinite leave after being charged as part of the NBA betting scandal (although he has not been officially fired by the Blazers yet, so Splitter is still interim head coach). Also also, the Blazers feature a couple of former Spurs in Blake Wesley and Sidy Cissoko, so there are several ties between the two teams.

As if anyone needs a reminder, the rounds are seven-game series in a 2-2-1-1-1 home/away format, with the first to four wins advancing. The series will begin on Sunday, April 19 in San Antonio at 8:00 PM CT and will be aired on NBC and Peacock (note that there are no local broadcasts in the playoffs this year). Game 2 will be on Tuesday at 7:00 also on NBC and Peacock. They will then will travel to Portland for Games 3 and 4, which will be on Friday at 9:30 PM on Prime and next Sunday at 2:30 on ESPN. (Thank you to the scheduling gods for looking out for those of us who struggle with Pacific coast games on work nights!) Games 5-7 are TBD and will be scheduled as needed.

We will have much more about this series in the coming days, including match-ups, x-factors, etc., but in the meantime, what has you the most excited about this series, and is it the one you wanted? Feel free to discuss, and in the meantime, welcome back to the playoffs, Pounders!

LaMelo Ball, guard for the Charlotte Hornets, apologized after a play that caused Miami Heat captain Bam Adebayo to lose his balance and fall during the second quarter.

"I apologize on that one," Ball told reporters after the game. "I got hit in the head and didn’t really know where I was, but I’m going to check in on him to see if he’s OK and everything."

Adebayo was attempting to save a ball from going out of bounds when Ball took his foot out from underneath him. Adebayo fell, landed on his tailbone and remained down for about a minute before walking to the locker room under his own power, albeit carefully.

Bam Adebayo falls hard and walks gingerly to the locker room after LaMelo Ball grabs his foot while in mid-air, swinging it (with replays) pic.twitter.com/bI3gC13xKk

— MrBuckBuck (@MrBuckBuckNBA) April 15, 2026

Adebayo was initially deemed questionable to return with a lower back injury, according to the Heat, but did not return to the court when the second half started. He was eventually officially ruled out before the third quarter was complete.

Who won the Charlotte Hornets-Miami Heat game last night?

The Miami Heat lost in overtime, 127-126, to the Charlotte Hornets. Their season is over.

Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra spoke to reporters about Adebayo’s injury

“I didn’t see it, but I don’t think it’s cute — I don’t think it’s funny — I think it’s a stupid play,” Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told reporters after the game. “It’s a dangerous play, obviously, our best player was out.

"I’m not making any excuse: the Hornets played great. They made those plays down the stretch. We had our opportunities to win. That’s a shame, to be penalized for that. I don’t think that belongs in the game, tripping guys and shenanigans.”

Spoelstra added that he felt an official should’ve made a call to eject LaMelo Ball.

“Somebody has got to see that, and he should’ve been thrown out of the game for that,” Spoelstra said.

Sarah Perkel is a South Florida Connect Reporter for the USA TODAY Network's Florida Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday day by signing up for the free newsletter,Florida TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: LaMelo Ball apologized after play that injured Bam Adebayo in Heat game

The Heat and Hornets gave us an instant classic to kick off the NBA Playoffs with their overtime thriller, but the conversation following the game was understandably focused on an ugly moment which happened at the start of the second quarter.

LaMelo Ball was driving to the basket when he fell to the ground on some light contact. Bam Adebayo recovered the ball, tried to keep it inbounds on one leg, when Ball tripped the Heat star, causing him to fall hard and be forced out of the game with a lower back injury.

The incident has been hotly debated. The angle above is damning, and it appears clear that Ball tripped Adebayo on purpose. Another angle from behind the play is less conclusive, looking more like LaMelo was flailing while complaining for a foul, and happened to pull Adebayo’s ankle as a result. Further muddying the water was a lack of a foul on the play, with a referee standing rightat the baseline, but not making a call.

Adebayo was listed as questionable to return with a lower back injury and was later downgraded to being out — playing only 11 minutes.

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was understandably heated after the game and didn’t hold back. While he credited the Hornets for making plays down the stretch, he acknowledged that not having Adebayo hurt his team in the elimination game.

Ball was asked about the incident following the game, and claims he didn’t know what happened.

“I apologize on that one. I got hit in the head, didn’t really know where I was — but I’m going to check on hin, make sure he’s okay and everything.”

The big question now is whether or not the NBA will take any action against LaMelo Ball. The Hornets are set to play the loser of Magic/76ers on Friday to determine the No. 8 seed in the playoffs. If the league decided a suspension was warranted for the trip it would essentially ensure Charlotte would lose that game, with Ball being the most important player on the Hornets. However, without a foul being called on the play it would be highly unusual for the NBA to suspend a player, meaning that LaMelo could get away with a fine.