NBA Playoff Bracket Set as Hornets, Blazers Advance in Play-In Wins

Charlotte and Portland forced a different kind of postseason conversation, one built less around the usual power centers and more around two franchises that changed the bracket on the same night. The Charlotte Hornets edged the Miami Heat 127-126 in overtime, while the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Phoenix Suns 114-110 to lock up the West’s No. 7 seed.

The Hornets’ win kept Charlotte alive for the East’s No. 8 seed and sent Miami home, a result that gave the first night of the play-in tournament the kind of urgency the league wanted when it stretched the regular season to 1,230 games. For Charlotte, the outcome matters beyond one overtime victory in April. A team that has spent years outside the conference’s center of gravity now has a direct path into the bracket, and the East’s final opening still runs through a market that has not often shaped the national playoff picture.

Portland’s advance carried a different kind of force. The Blazers did not just survive, they earned the West’s No. 7 spot by beating Phoenix behind a huge night from Deni Avdija, who scored 41 points with seven rebounds and 12 assists on 15-for-22 shooting. That performance pushed Portland, Oregon, into a bracket slot that puts the Trail Blazers immediately into the main draw and gives the conference a more unpredictable lower seed than many expected when the regular season closed.

The full postseason frame is already set around those results. The 2026 SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament runs April 14-17, the first round of the NBA Playoffs begins April 18, and Game 1 of the NBA Finals is scheduled for June 3. All of the play-in games are being shown exclusively on Prime Video, giving the league’s newest postseason gatekeeper a streaming-only stage as the field is whittled down to 16.

That field became official after Sunday’s regular-season finale, and the final stretch had already revealed how narrow the margins were in the East. Six Eastern Conference teams were separated by just three games entering the closing push, a compression that made every possession feel like a seed swing. The league’s bracket page now shows the top seeds and first-round matchups in place, with the last No. 7 and No. 8 spots still to be decided through the play-in.

The timing also carried a historical echo. The league highlighted April 13, 2016, the day Kobe Bryant scored 60 in his final game and Golden State finished 73-9. That anniversary frames this year’s bracket release as more than a scheduling formality. With Charlotte and Portland breaking through, the postseason opens with a reminder that championship expectations still shift when less dominant franchises turn survival into leverage.