ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 The Orlando Magic are in a do-or-die game Friday night against the Charlotte Hornets to earn the No. 8 seed in the NBA playoffs. <\/p>\n
The winner of Friday\u2019s game will play No. 1 Detroit Pistons in the first round. The loser is eliminated and will end the 2025-26 season. <\/p>\n
The Magic lost to the Philadelphia 76ers 109-97 Wednesday, while the Hornets beat the Miami Heat 127-126 in overtime Tuesday. Since the Magic are higher in the standings, Orlando will host Charlotte. <\/p>\n
Even without star center Joel Embiid, the Magic couldn\u2019t hang with the Sixers. Guard Tyrese Maxey scored 31 points, who was already averaging 30 points against the Magic this season. The Magic only hit 7-27 of 3-pointers and had 14 turnovers.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to give Philly a ton of credit for the way they swarmed and packed the paint,\u201d Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley said after the game. \u201cOur guys continued to fight. Their spirits are in the right space, knowing we got to go home and take care of home on Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Desmond Bane led the Magic with 34 points and going 4-6 from three, including getting the Magic within striking distance in the fourth quarter. Paolo Banchero struggled, going 7-22 from the floor and finishing with 18 points. <\/p>\n
Now, the Magic will host the Hornets, a team that beat the Magic in three out of the four regular season matchups, all by double digits. <\/p>\n
\u201c[The Hornets] have been playing really well,\u201d Banchero said. \u201cWe got to be ready; I got to be ready. We have to be locked in from the jump. I thought we played hard tonight, but it wasn\u2019t enough. It\u2019s going to take even more of an effort, and it\u2019s going to take me playing better as well. It\u2019s definitely a big game on Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tip off at the Kia Center is 7:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 The Orlando Magic are in a do-or-die game Friday night against the Charlotte Hornets to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3779],"tags":[7,48,6,47,76,3883,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-711926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando-magic","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-magic","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-orlando","12":"tag-orlando-magic","13":"tag-orlandomagic","14":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116415902561673375","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711926","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=711926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}