{"id":692648,"date":"2026-04-01T21:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/692648\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T21:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:38:16","slug":"nba-news-live-updates-magics-franz-wagner-returns-wednesday-joel-embiid-ruled-out-after-april-fools-confusion-lakers-and-nuggets-clinch-playoff-spots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/692648\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA news, live updates: Magic&#8217;s Franz Wagner returns Wednesday; Joel Embiid ruled out after April Fool&#8217;s confusion; Lakers and Nuggets clinch playoff spots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Knicks entered Thursday night on a seven-game winning streak with a chance to clinch a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n<p>That playoff spot will have to wait. A Hornets team fighting for its own playoff berth raced to a 114-103 win in Charlotte.<\/p>\n<p>Rookie Kon Knueppel led the Hornets effort with 26 points, 11 rebounds and 8 assists while shooting 6 of 10 from 3.<\/p>\n<p>The Hornets won their fifth straight to improve to 39-34. They appear to be safely in the East play-in with a 9.5-game lead over the Bucks and Bulls, who are tied for 11th place. They\u2019re among four teams (Magic, 76ers, Heat) in striking distance of the 40-32 Raptors and 41-32 Hawks for the final two guaranteed playoff spots in the East.<\/p>\n<p>The Knicks, meanwhile, fall to 48-26 in third place in the East. They\u2019re 5.5 games behind the Pistons and one game behind the Celtics. The Pistons are the only team in the East to have clinched a guaranteed playoff spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Knicks entered Thursday night on a seven-game winning streak with a chance to clinch a playoff spot&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,86958,123,623,185,368,6,11,253,86442,209,693],"class_list":{"0":"post-692648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-dominant-season","10":"tag-giannis-antetokounmpo","11":"tag-gilgeous-alexander","12":"tag-lebron-james","13":"tag-luka-doncic","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-nba-playoffs","16":"tag-nikola-jokic","17":"tag-postseason-awards","18":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","19":"tag-victor-wembanyama"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}