What: Charlotte Hornets (43-39) (22-18 away) at New York Knicks (53-28) (30-9 home)
When: 6:00pm Eastern
Where: Madison Square Garden; New York, NY
How to watch: FanDuel Sports Network, NBA League Pass
Outfitting: Hornets–Icon (teal), Knicks–City (cream)
Game Lines: Hornets -13.5, Hornets money line -800, O/U 217.5
Injuries:
Hornets: Coby White-probable (calf), PJ Hall-out (ankle)
Knicks: Jalen Brunson-out, Josh Hart-out, OG Anunoby-out, Mikal Bridges-out, Karl-Anthony Towns-out, Mitchell Robinson-out, Landry Shamet-out, Tyler Kolek-out
There isn’t much to preview in terms of the basketball that is going to be played. The Knicks are locked into the three seed in the Eastern Conference, so they are shutting down pretty much all of their key rotation players for the game today. That opens the door for the Hornets to close out the regular season with a win, and they badly need one for a number of reasons.
First, the Hornets need to win to clinch the 8 seed. There’s no way for them to move up to 7, so the best they’ll be able to get is a home game in the first round of the play-in tournament. They need either a win or a Heat loss. The Heat play the Hawks, who need a win or a Raptors loss to hold onto the 5 seed. However, they have most of their roster listed as questionable, so they might rest a lot of guys and let the chips fall where they may. It’s not a given that the Hawks are going to win, so the Hornets need to take care of the Knicks backups and leave no doubt.
Second, the Hornets need a little confidence boost. They have completely collapsed in the fourth quarter in both of their recent losses after going toe to toe against the Eastern Conference’s best through three quarters. It’ll be nice to get a bunch of shots to go down and get some good reps in a high pressure situation against an softer opponent. Hopefully some success there breeds some confidence in the high leverage situations against the better teams the playoffs will offer up.
Regardless of the result today, the Hornets next game will be on Wednesday against the Heat. Today just determines the location.
