Charlotte Hornets (44-38, ninth in the Eastern Conference) vs. Orlando Magic (45-37, eighth in the Eastern Conference)<\/p>\n
Orlando, Florida; Friday, 7:30 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
LINE: Hornets -3.5; over\/under is 218<\/p>\n
PLAY-IN GAME: The Magic and Hornets square off to decide the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: The Orlando Magic and the Charlotte Hornets take the court for the NBA Playoffs Play-In Tournament. The winner claims the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs.<\/p>\n
The Magic are 26-26 against Eastern Conference opponents. Orlando is 20-26 against opponents with a winning record.<\/p>\n
The Hornets are 11-5 against the rest of their division. Charlotte is seventh in the Eastern Conference scoring 116.0 points per game and is shooting 46.0%.<\/p>\n
The Magic are shooting 46.4% from the field this season, 0.3 percentage points lower than the 46.7% the Hornets allow to opponents. The Hornets are shooting 46.0% from the field, 1.6% lower than the 47.6% the Magic’s opponents have shot this season.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Paolo Banchero is averaging 22.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and 5.2 assists for the Magic. Jalen Suggs is averaging 2.8 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LaMelo Ball is averaging 20.1 points and 7.1 assists for the Hornets. Brandon Miller is averaging 19.5 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Magic: 7-3, averaging 116.4 points, 43.5 rebounds, 27.3 assists, 8.1 steals and 4.0 blocks per game while shooting 47.0% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 117.5 points per game.<\/p>\n
Hornets: 6-4, averaging 113.4 points, 44.8 rebounds, 24.9 assists, 6.3 steals and 4.1 blocks per game while shooting 45.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 107.1 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Magic: Jonathan Isaac: day to day (knee).<\/p>\n
Hornets: Moussa Diabate: day to day (hip), PJ Hall: out for season (ankle).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By The Associated Press Charlotte Hornets (44-38, ninth in the Eastern Conference) vs. Orlando Magic (45-37, eighth in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3779],"tags":[7,48,6,47,76,3883],"class_list":{"0":"post-712276","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"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116419044482273002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712276","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=712276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}