Hornets Sixth Seed Dreams: Miami’s Historical Roadblock Comes First

I would’ve been laughed out of the room if I wrote this in the preseason. The 2025-2026 Charlotte Hornets (26-29), however, are no longer a laughing matter.

Following Charlotte’s second victory over the Atlanta Hawks (26-30) in five days, head coach Charles Lee and the Hornets swapped with Atlanta and now sit in ninth place in the NBA’s Eastern Conference standings.

That fact alone would have been scoffed at a month into the NBA season, as the Hornets sat 10 games below .500.

Yet, following a 10-1 Hornets’ heater to close out the first half of the season, they stare Miami and Orlando squarely in the eyes with a real puncher’s chance to do exactly that:

Make the playoffs outright for the first time since the Play-In Tournament’s invention.

Via Tankathon, Charlotte sits with the NBA’s 18th-toughest remaining schedule post All-Star break. The Hornets are three games back in the East of current seventh-seed Orlando (28-25), whom Charlotte is one win away from owning the in-season tiebreaker over (2-1 Hornets; 1 game left).

Miami, in eighth place at 29-27, is where it gets tricky; it’s where it’s always been tricky for Charlotte… going back to the pre-Bobcats days.

It’s an obstacle Charlotte would do well to hurdle amid their outright playoff push.

The original Hornets’ best 50-win years competed with Jordan’s dominant Bulls in the Central. But Charlotte hasn’t been able to overcome Miami’s dominance in the Southeast division since the NBA’s Bobcats’ addition forced divisional realignment to expand to 30 teams.

Charlotte saw its first-ever playoff-series win and 50-win season before the Heat. Until 2002, Charlotte kept up with Miami in the matchup— it was a real back-and-forth rivalry for the first few years, sitting near .500 for all of 1989-2002.

Miami joined the league one year after Charlotte. By the Hornets' final Charlotte season in 2001-02, Charlotte led the all-time series 25-24.

Since then? The all-time Hornets/Heat series record stands at 82 wins for Miami and 49 for Charlotte. Charlotte has won one fewer game (24) against the Heat in 21 seasons than the original Hornets won in their first 13.

The ramifications of the move to New Orleans are a story worthy of its own limelight; of the many things the move did, though? Completely flipping the competitive series with Miami is what matters most here.

Charlotte has a real chance to finally take the Southeast division en route to their first outright playoff appearance since a seven-game series loss in 2015-2016 against… the Miami Heat.

The most this-day-will-live-in-infamy among modern Hornets’ moments came from this series, in Charlotte for game six with the Hornets up 3-2. I will leave the research up to you if you don’t know already.

Not to mention the Alonzo Morning to Miami for Glen Rice trade history, and the “why” behind Mourning’s exit, which was due to Charlotte’s financial restrictions from Larry Johnson’s massive contract.

Combined with their off-court fighting over team leadership, Miami found themselves in one of their biggest early trade steals of the franchise for an MVP-caliber center in Mourning, with Charlotte trading Glen Rice less than four seasons later.

Glen Rice was a brief MVP candidate in Charlotte; Mourning’s number is retired in Miami.

Now, for the first time since the domino of Mourning led to decades of Heat dominance, Charlotte isn’t just “chasing” Miami’s pace or their “Heat Culture” from below. They're chasing them in the standings with real momentum and a legitimately better roster makeup.

The Hornets are only 2.5 games behind Miami in the East, but have lost the first two of four matchups against the Heat. It hasn’t been this critical that Charlotte split a season series since… 2015-2016.

Charlotte finished in a four-way seeding tie. This gave Miami the ever-important home-court advantage in the series, which they won at home in game seven. All because of a seeding tiebreaker.

Charlotte can only tie Miami at 2-2 this season. Tying them and taking two complete games away from their deficit in the standings, though, will go far in the Hornets' hunt for the playoffs and their division title.

The NBA doesn’t reward divisional winners the way it used to, but for Charlotte, it would be symbolic of its organizational change:

The Hornets are the only team in the league to have never won a division crown. Not in the Southeast or Central. It’s one of those stats the Hornets absolutely want nothing to do with, reward or not.

It seems that franchise-wide change has led this Charlotte team to the right mentality that Miami’s had over their heads for years.

Following Charlotte’s last win versus Atlanta, rookie Kon Knueppel had this to say about whether the rest from the All-Star Weekend break would affect him:

“I’ll be ready for the last 27 (games),” Knueppel said. “And more.”

Knueppel needs to be ready, too.

Per ESPN Analytics, if Charlotte wants to make the top six outright? The analytics suggest Charlotte needs to go 20-7 over their last 27 games.

Charlotte still has to play: Boston three times, New York twice more, and Detroit once more…

On paper, that’s a rough draw— I just think the Hornets are finally past the point of caring about those silly little things like on-paper power ratings.

Not to mention the aforementioned two Miami games that the Hornets still must win to tie the season series at 2-2.

This stretch won’t be easy, but it’s a rite of passage. One the Hornets haven’t conquered in a long time…

They haven’t even been able to beat Miami. They can do that, win the division, and make a top-six seed all for the first time this year.

It all started with the mindset of thinking they actually could. Charlotte finally has that now, and isn’t at the whim of what their divisional foes have to say about it for the first time since the Bobcats started in Charlotte.

Just to make the play-in, Charlotte could go 13-14 and still muster it (ESPN Analytics). The play-in IS an inevitability at this point, barring a catastrophic Hornets’ season collapse.

Truly, it’s about the sixth-seed now; it’s only fitting that the beast of the southeast in Miami stands slightly in their way of getting that, as well as Charlotte’s first-ever NBA divisional crown.

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