‘I expect it to be lit’: Hornets prep for first home postseason game in 10 years
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Hornets host Miami in 9 vs. 10 NBA play-in tournament Tuesday. The loser is done for year.
- Remember purple shirt guy? That was 10 years ago, when Charlotte last hosted postseason.
- Hornets’ Miles Bridges has played 501 regular-season games without a playoff appearance.
For a preview of what Tuesday night in Charlotte will look like in the Spectrum Center, Charlotte Hornets coach Charles Lee brought up the recent past.
The Hornets will host the Miami Heat in a “win-or-go-home” game in the NBA play-in tournament (7:30 p.m., Amazon Prime). It will be the first postseason NBA basketball of any kind in Charlotte in almost exactly 10 years, since “purple shirt guy” riled up Dwyane Wade against the same Miami Heat in Game 6 of an ill-fated first-round series.
As for what Tuesday will look and sound like:
“I expect it to be lit,” Lee said Monday, the day after the Hornets finished a 44-38 regular season. “My wife was actually able to go to the Panthers’ playoff game (in January, which Carolina lost in a thriller). I remember her calling me because we were on the road somewhere, so I obviously wasn’t able to be there. And she’s like, ‘This is insane! People are going crazy! This town is ready for a winning team, playoff atmosphere!’ So that was exciting to hear. And so I expect a very similar environment here (Tuesday) night.”
The Hornets enter the game very healthy and as a 5.5-point favorite, despite Miami also being very healthy and beating Charlotte three times in four tries in the regular season.
This will be the 9 vs. 10 play-in game in the NBA play-in tournament, which is sort of like the NCAA Tournament’s “First Four,” but not exactly. A win Tuesday doesn’t get you in, but a loss will most certainly knock you out.
The Hornets-Heat winner will then have to play on the road against the Orlando-Philadelphia loser (that game is Wednesday) on Friday night. And if the Hornets go 2-0 this workweek, their reward is an honest-to-goodness, best-of-7 playoff series, against No. 1 Detroit, starting Sunday on the road.
So it could be a busy week, or it could end as abruptly as a book slammed shut. The Hornets might be clearing out their lockers Wednesday after a loss. That’s exactly what happened the past two times the Hornets made the play-in tourney, in 2021 and 2022 (both of those games were on the road).
As Miles Bridges described it: “We got out to two slow starts, and we got beat by over 20-plus.”
Exactly. And after it happened a second time in a row, in 2022 with an embarrassing 132-103 loss at Atlanta, then-owner Michael Jordan fired then-coach James Borrego.
Bridges has a personal stake in this. He’s well aware that he’s the active leader on a dubious NBA list: Players who have played the most regular-season games without playing in a single playoff game (play-in games, by NBA definition, don’t count as the actual playoffs). According to Basketball Reference, Bridges also ranks in the top 10 all-time on the list. He has played in 501 regular-season games and no playoff games in his NBA career, which has all been spent in Charlotte.
“It’s No. 1 on my list to make it to the playoffs and play for something,” Bridges said Monday. “You know I’ve probably got the most games as a (current) player to not make the playoffs, so I definitely want to get off that list. And I feel like everybody on this team deserves to be in the playoffs. We work so hard.”
A quick word about what happened 10 years ago, the last time the Spectrum Center hosted any sort of postseason NBA basketball:
A Hornets team led by Kemba Walker led the first-round series, 3-2, and came home seemingly ready to put the Heat away.
Walker, now a Hornets assistant coach, had 37 points in Game 6. He was spectacular. But Wade, who hadn’t made a 3-pointer in months, made two huge threes in the fourth quarter to clinch the game for Miami. Wade also had something of a staredown going on with Hornets heckler Michael Deason, a season ticket holder who was in a courtside seat, wearing a purple shirt and was known ever after as “purple shirt guy.”
Deason didn’t lose the game for Charlotte, of course — Wade won it. But there has been much talk in the intervening years about “if only purple shirt guy hadn’t fired up D-Wade” and so on.
Still, that wasn’t the end of the series. There was a Game 7 in Miami, and Charlotte played one of the worst playoff games in its history, losing by 33 points.
And that was the last time the Hornets were in the playoffs. They’ve got a chance to write some new history this week.
“I love that we got to play some playoff caliber games and some playoff caliber environments, and I think that it helps our young team,” Lee said. “Also, with some of them being so young, they know what it’s like to play in that NCAA Tournament, when you’ve got that ‘win or go home’ mindset.”
Actually, this is either going to be “lose-and-stay-home” or “win-and-go-on-the-road” scenario for the Hornets. But you knew what he meant.
The arena is certainly going to be lit when the evening begins, as Lee said. But it’s going to be up to the Hornets to keep the lights on.
This story was originally published April 14, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘I expect it to be lit’: Hornets prep for first home postseason game in 10 years."
