With just five regular season games remaining – and a tiebreaker that favours the Atlanta Hawks for the eighth seed – the Toronto Raptors need to capitalize on every winnable matchup they can. Enter the Charlotte Hornets.
The Hornets sit at 26-52 on the season, putting them in 14th place in the Eastern Conference. They’ve quietly put together a nice stretch of basketball under head coach Steve Clifford, highlighted by back-to-back wins against the Mavericks and a subsequent win in Oklahoma City. But guys like Gordon Hayward and P.J. Washington played big roles during the team’s positive stretch, so with both players likely sidelined today – in addition to a plethora of other Hornets – the Raptors find themselves in a very winnable matchup.