What Charlotte Hornets must do to beat Miami Heat in NBA play-in tournament
Maybe it’s poetic justice. Or a cruel twist of fate.
Either way, the Charlotte Hornets find themselves matched up with the very same team that won the last postseason date at Spectrum Center. That would be the Miami Heat, which upended Charlotte in Game 6 of the 2016 NBA Playoffs when “Purple Shirt Guy” got Dwyane Wade riled up leading to a stomach-churning highlight reel for the ages.
In order for the ninth-seeded Hornets to punch an official playoff ticket and make the eight-team Eastern Conference field, they have to get past 10th-seeded Miami in the first round of the NBA’s play-in tournament at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
“That locker room, those group of guys,” coach Charles Lee said, “they love competing, they love doing it together. They have enjoyed every bit of this process and journey, and I know they are going to be ready to prepare for a Miami team and give it everything they have.”
Which will be an arduous task given the Heat’s recent success against the Hornets.
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Miami won the season series 3-1, resulting in Charlotte needing to finish one game ahead of the Heat to avoid having to win two outings on the road to reach the actual playoff field for the first time in a decade. Miami beat the Hornets by an average of 17.6 points, including a whopping 22.5 in their first two dates of the 2025-26 campaign.
There’s a slight caveat in all that, though: Two of the four matchups between the Hornets and Heat took place in Miami within an 11-day span during the initial month of the season.
Charlotte isn’t the same team now as it was then, fueled by a turnaround that went from 4-14 to compiling the most wins since 2016.
And the Hornets understand they have to tighten things up in a variety of areas to ensure the outcome is in their favor. Win and they move on to play at the loser of Wednesday’s game between No. 7 Philadelphia and No. 8 Orlando on Friday for the right to meet the top-seeded Detroit Pistons in a best-of-seven series beginning Sunday in Michigan.
“We’ve just got to start the game physical,” Miles Bridges said. “We’ve got to be the physical team and have them match our physicality, because the times that we did lose against them, they came out and punched us in the mouth first. So, we’ve got to punch them.”
They also noticed something else.
“The ones that we lost, they were beating us to offensive rebounds, had a lot of points in the paint,” Bridges said. “And the game we beat them, we limited their offensive rebounds, we limited their paint points, and Tyler Herro had a tough time when we played.
“So, we’ve just got to make it tough for Tyler and Bam (Adebayo) and let other guys beat us.”
That’s why it’s going to be of great importance for the Hornets to not freestyle defensively, instead focusing in on how Lee wants to guard the Heat. Lapses can’t happen.
“We’ve just got to know what we are in, know what the coaches are talking about,” LaMelo Ball said. “Be consistent and obviously just follow the game plan.”
Given he didn’t get traded to Charlotte until February, Coby White wasn’t around for those first two outings against Miami. But the veteran guard, who has postseason experience, has a good idea of what worked well for the Hornets’ victory over the Heat in their last meeting back on St. Patrick’s Day.
And that’s staying away from a grind-it-out type of flow.
“We’ve just got to use our pace,” White said. “It’ll be a tough game if we make it a half-court game. It plays into their favor because of all the weapons they have offensively, the length that they play with defensively, the physicality they play with. So, I think we’ve got to use our pace.
“They’re a team that’s going to be obviously well-prepared. They got a hell of a coach in Erik Spoelstra. So for us, we got to be honed into the details.”
Especially when it comes to trying to neutralize things on the interior.
“They live in the paint, they live on the free-throw line as well,” White said. “So, we got to play defense, stay between them and around but also playing defense without fouling is a big key. For us, it’s just playing with pace, being solid on the defensive end. And I think we’ll have a great opportunity.”
This story was originally published April 13, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "What Charlotte Hornets must do to beat Miami Heat in NBA play-in tournament."
