The truth about being an NBA contender is that you're not one if you're afraid of who you match up with in the first round. A true contender doesn't care about that, and the Boston Celtics have not and were not an exception to this notion this season.
However, that doesn't mean some teams would have been harder to match up with than others. Boston will take on any challenge that comes their way this coming postseason, but they avoided perhaps the one team that would have rattled their cage: the Charlotte Hornets.
MassLive's Brian Robb revealed that the Celtics are likely to play either the Orlando Magic or the Philadelphia 76ers, as the Hornets' loss will likely take them out of the running as the No. 7 seed.
WIth Hornets set to lose to the Pistons, looking highly likely it will be Magic vs. 76ers for the 7 vs. 8 matchup with the winner playing Boston in the first round.
— Brian Robb (@BrianTRobb) April 11, 2026
Boston would have beat Charlotte, but a series like that would have likely played out the same way Boston's first-round matchup against Brooklyn would have. Yeah, they swept them, but the Nets definitely made them sweat and fought them from start to finish in pretty much every game. The Hornets could have done the same.
The Hornets have been killing it over the latter half of the season, but it goes without saying that if a team dug itself too deep a hole, there's only so much ground they can make up. Charlotte's been impressive, and they are next up, but that doesn't erase how bad they were over the first half of the 2025-26 season.
Even so, the Celtics are lucky that they likely won't face one of the hottest teams in the league, as a championship run is a marathon, and the Hornets would have been quite the hurdle. Boston won two of their last three matchups, which coincided with their turnaround, but Charlotte blew them out, and those two wins were hard-fought.
76ers & Magic won't be too easy, but they're not as scary
Philly, unfortunately, suffered a pretty massive blow following the sad news of Joel Embiid's appendectomy, which will likely hold him out for a few weeks, and even if he comes back, he may need to work off some of the rust.
They still have a solid team without him, but Embiid is their ceiling raiser. Without a healthy version of the former MVP, they're not going anywhere. To be fair, they've never really had that in the Embiid era.
With the Magic, they have been woefully inconsistent all year when many thought a finals run was a possibility for them. Injuries have gotten in their way, but there have been a lot of questions about Paolo Banchero. Boston beat Orlando in a gentleman's sweep last season, but the Magic weren't afraid to get their hands dirty.
If they had taken the leap many thought they would, this would be a scarier matchup. But then again, if they had taken said leap, they wouldn't be in this position to have a rematch under the exact same circumstances.
Because the Sixers will be unhealthy and the Magic haven't quite figured themselves out, the Celtics will be more comfortable facing them than the Hornets, a team that is peaking at the right time, even if they enter the playoffs as the No. 8 seed.