Magic’s Paolo Banchero reveals key to Orlando’s win over Hornets

The Orlando Magic secured the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed by overwhelming the Charlotte Hornets 121-90 in a Play-In elimination game that was effectively decided before halftime. Orlando built a 31-point lead at the break and came out with a defensive resilience that was too much for the Hornets all night.

The Magic had lost the season series 2-1 against Charlotte, as Paolo Banchero broke down exactly what changed in the play-in, per a post on X by NBA TV.

Winning through physicality

Paolo Banchero breaks down the Magic’s gameplan that helped them secure the victory over Charlotte in the @SoFi Play-In Tournament. pic.twitter.com/p7szW7XQW3

— NBA TV (@NBATV) April 18, 2026

“We knew that we were gonna be able to, or if we were going to be able to win the game it was going to have to be by, you know, being extra physical and setting the tone with a physicality. We know they are a team that loves to run, play offense, shoot a lot of threes. And that gave us a lot of problems in the regular season. So I think, just us learning from those games that we lost to them in the regular season and coming here with a plan of, you know, this is different, this is the playoffs environment and we got to set the tone on our home floor,” he said.

The Magic opened the game 27-10 and had LaMelo Ball restricted to just two points in the entirety of the first half. It wasn’t that the Hornets were not getting shots away.

They had 83 attempts overall compared to the Magic’s 84 but converted a paltry 28 of them for a 33.1% overall efficiency. They also had 45 three-point attempts compared to just 27 from the Magic, but converted just 12 of them for a 26.7% overall efficiency.

Kon Knueppel finished the play-in with just one made three-pointer out of 12 attempts, going 1-6 from this game. LaMelo Ball scored 21 points in the third quarter, but the game was over in a quarter and a half.

Banchero himself had an extremely busy night, going 9-17 from the field and also producing six assists, five rebounds, two steals and a block. Orlando, of course, does not have time to rest and will now look to prepare for their first-round series against the Detroit Pistons.

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