MIAMI (AP) — Atlanta is on a 10-game winning streak, its best stretch in more than 11 years. Orlando and Miami just ran off seven straight victories. Charlotte might be playoff-bound for the first time in a decade.
The Southeast Division is ... good?
Seems so. At least, it's not historically bad as was the case last season when the Hawks, Magic, Heat, Hornets and Washington Wizards combined for the worst record by any division in NBA history. And it's possible the division could send four teams to the playoffs for the first time since 2014.
Division races and championships don't mean much anymore and haven't for some time. But the four Southeast teams in the mix with playoff hopes — everybody but Washington — sure seem as though they are feeding off one another and have been since the All-Star break.
“I would say that’s probably a factor,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Everybody also knows what time it is right now. You have to make moves. You have to do something. And we knew that coming out of All-Star break.”
Everyone got the message. Most everyone, that is.
The Wizards seem to have no interest in winning right now, proven by the way they played defense — or not — against Miami’s Bam Adebayo in his 83-point game last week. They’ll start anew next year, they hope, with Trae Young and Anthony Davis to build around.
Otherwise, the division is rolling. The five teams are a combined 40-25 since the break, the best mark by any division in the NBA during that stretch. Atlanta is 11-1, Miami has gone 9-3, Orlando is 10-4, Charlotte is 8-5 and Washington is 2-12.
This is how good the Southeast has been in recent weeks: Atlanta was ninth in the Eastern Conference after a loss to Miami on Feb. 20. The Hawks were 9-0 since that game going into Monday night — and were still ninth in the East.
Monday's win pulled Atlanta into a tie with Philadelphia for eighth place; the Hawks own the tiebreaker, so if the season was over now, they would be the No. 8 seed going into the play-in tournament.
Imagine: a 10-game winning streak, and you move up one spot.
“Everybody's trying to be aggressive but also solid at the same time,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. “I think that's really important. We don't want to be gambling. We just want to make people work.”
Charlotte is fun to watch, unless you're on the other bench. Kon Knueppel is a serious challenger to his former Duke teammate, Dallas' Cooper Flagg, for Rookie of the Year. The Hornets shoot a bunch of 3s, they play fast and they've got a little swagger.
The Hornets added through the draft. The Hawks might have added by subtraction; trading Young ended all the speculation about his future in Atlanta and his now-former team is 20-10, the third-best record in the East, just a half-game behind Detroit and Cleveland since that deal got done. The Heat, they just try to outwork everybody — as always — and found some gems in Pelle Larsson and Kasparas Jakucionis to go alongside the likes of Adebayo.
And the Magic, they evidently just needed a little conflict.
Teams don't always flourish when coaches and star players clash. Orlando might have done just that. It was clear earlier this season — a couple of times this season, actually — that Magic coach Jamahl Mosley and star forward Paolo Banchero weren't in total lockstep. Banchero said some things, Mosley subtly clapped back, and things seemed goofy up near Disney World.
Funny thing is, when the Magic seemed to be in trouble everything started to work.
“We're both competitors,” Banchero said when asked about his relationship with Mosley. “There were times where I was frustrated and I wasn't playing as well as I think I should be. But it never became me pointing the finger at him or being disrespectful. It was all constructive; he’s talking to me, I’m talking to him. And winning, it cures everything. ... Something I feel I learned at Duke is when there’s a little bit of conflict, it makes you lock in a little more."
Less than a month remains in the regular season. The jostling between the Hawks, Heat, Magic and Hornets could go all the way to the wire. The Southeast might not have a bona fide, can't-miss, title favorite in that group — but it does have four teams that could be hitting their best stride at the right time.
“It's just this time of year,” Mosley said. “Every game matters.”
Around The NBA analyzes the biggest topics in the NBA during the season.
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Charlotte Hornets guard Kon Knueppel (7) goes for a layup against Sacramento Kings center Maxime Raynaud (42) during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Justine Willard)
Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo warms up before a game against the Milwaukee Bucks Thursday, March 12, 2026, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's top security official and the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Basij militia were both killed in overnight strikes in a blow to the country’s leadership, Israel's defense minister said Tuesday, while Tehran defiantly fired new salvos of missiles and drones at its Gulf Arab neighbors and Israel.
Both security official Ali Larijani and Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani were “eliminated last night," Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. Iran's 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died in an airstrike Feb. 28, the first day of the war launched by the United States and Israel, and other top leaders from the Iranian theocracy have been killed since then.
Iranian state media did not immediately confirm either death. However, it said a message from Larijani’s office would be published shortly.
The announcement came after the Israeli military had earlier said it had carried out a “wide-scale wave of strikes” across Iran’s capital and stepped up strikes on Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Israel also reported two incoming salvos before dawn from Iran at Tel Aviv and elsewhere, and said Hezbollah targeted Israel’s north.
Incoming Iranian missiles on the United Arab Emirates prompted Dubai, a major transit hub for international travel, to briefly shut its airspace and a man was killed by the debris of a missile intercepted over Abu Dhabi.
Larijani hails from one of Iran’s most famous political families. A former parliamentary speaker and senior policy adviser, he was appointed to advise the late Khamenei on strategy in nuclear talks with the Trump administration.
He also served as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, its top security body.
Soleimani, meantime, was the head of the Basij militia forces, which Israel's military called an “armed apparatus of the Iranian terror regime.”
“During internal protests in Iran, particularly in recent periods as demonstrations intensified, Basij forces under Soleimani’s command led the main repression operations, employing severe violence, widespread arrests and the use of force against civilian demonstrators,” Israel's military said in a statement.
The U.S. Treasury lists Soleimani as having been born in 1965. He has been sanctioned by the U.S., the European Union and other nations over his role in helping suppress dissent for years through the Basij.
Killing Soleimani would likely further strain the command and control of the Basij, which would be crucial in putting down any uprising against the theocracy. The Basij and other internal security forces have been a target of attack by both the Americans and the Israelis so far.
Iran kept up the pressure on the energy infrastructure of its Gulf Arab neighbors, hitting an oil facility in Fujairah, a UAE emirate on the country’s east coast with the Gulf of Oman that has been repeatedly targeted. State-run WAM news reported that no one had been injured in the blast from the drone strike.
The man killed by falling debris from an intercepted missile was the eighth person to die in the UAE since the start of the war, authorities said.
Iran's attacks on Gulf nations and its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil is transported, has given rise to increasing concerns of a global energy crisis. Early Tuesday it hit a tanker anchored off the coast of Fujairah, one of about 20 vessels hit since Israel and the United States started the war with an attack on Iran on Feb. 28.
Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said his country had been given no choice but to keep up its pressure on shipping traffic in the strait.
“They are flying, launching missiles, should we just sit back and do nothing in response?" he said in an interview on state television.
With Washington under increasing pressure over rising oil prices, Brent crude, the international standard, remained over $100 a barrel, up more than 40% since the war started.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he had demanded that roughly a half-dozen countries send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. But his appeals brought no immediate commitments, with many saying they are hesitant to get involved in a war with no defined exit plan and skeptical that they could do more than the U.S. Navy.
The UAE shut down its airspace early Tuesday as its military reported it was “responding to missile and drone threats from Iran." The closure was soon lifted, and not long after the sounds of explosions could be heard as the military worked to intercept incoming fire.
The snap announcement on its airspace showed the balancing act Emirati authorities face in trying to keep their long-haul carriers, Emirates and Etihad, flying as Iranian attacks continue to target the country.
Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry reported intercepting a dozen drones Tuesday morning over the country’s vast Eastern Province, home to oil infrastructure.
In Qatar, the sounds of explosions boomed over the capital early in the day as defenses worked to intercept incoming fire. Qatar's Defense Ministry said later that it had successfully thwarted a missile attack on the city, though a fire broke out in an industrial area from a downed projectile.
Attacks from Iran-linked proxy forces continued in Iraq, as the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was hit with shrapnel from drones that had been intercepted.
The embassy's air defenses were able to shoot down all four drones targeting the facility, according to two Iraqi security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
A separate strike targeted a house in the heavily fortified Presidential Compound in Baghdad’s al-Jadriya area, the officials said. It wasn’t clear who carried out either attack but Iran-allied militias have regularly been attacking American targets inside Iraq since the conflict began.
The Israeli military early Tuesday said it had launched new attacks across Tehran in addition to the Lebanese capital targeting Hezbollah militants.
In Iran, it said it hit command centers, missile launch sites and air defense systems. There was no immediate confirmation from Iran, where little information has been coming out due to internet outages, round-the-clock airstrikes and tight restrictions on journalists.
Israel did not immediately release details of its attacks on Lebanon, but the Lebanese army said two of its soldiers were seriously wounded in an airstrike on the village of Kfar Sir.
More than 1,300 people have been killed in Iran since the start of the conflict, according to the Iranian Red Crescent.
Israel’s strikes have also displaced more than 1 million Lebanese — or roughly 20% of the population — according to the Lebanese government, which says some 850 people have been killed.
Some Israeli troops have pushed into southern Lebanon, and there are fears Israel is preparing a large-scale invasion.
The military's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, said Monday on a visit to the northern border that Israel's army is “determined to deepen the operation until all of our objectives are achieved” and that the military's Northern Command is being reinforced with additional soldiers.
Israel reported two Iranian salvos early Tuesday fired toward Tel Aviv and an area south of the Sea of Galilee. More launches from Lebanon were also reported.
In Israel, 12 people have been killed by Iranian missile fire. At least 13 U.S. military members have been killed.
The virtual shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz is unnerving the world economy, driving up energy prices, threatening food shortages in poor countries, destabilizing fragile states and complicating efforts by central banks to drive down prices for consumers.
There have been a handful of ships getting through, primarily Iranian but also from other countries including India and Turkey, and Iran has said it technically remains open — just not for the United States, Israel and its allies. Iraq said Tuesday it was in talks with Iran about allowing passage for its ships.
Underscoring the danger of even getting close to the strait, a tanker anchored off the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates was hit by a projectile early Tuesday morning and sustained minor damage, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, run by the British military.
Rising reported from Bangkok and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Giovanna Dell'Orto in Miami, Florida; Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad; and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
FILE -Iranian Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani, speaks during a press conference after his meeting with the Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, in Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
FILE - Commander of Iran's Basij paramilitary force, Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, gives a press conference in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)
A view of a building damaged in an Israeli airstrike, in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Two men ride their motorbike past a billboard of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
U.S. Embassy is seen across the Tigris River in Baghdad, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Fire and plumes of smoke rises after a drone struck a fuel tank forcing the temporary suspension of flights. near Dubai International Airport, in United Arab Emirates, early Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo)
Volunteers clean debris from a residential building damaged when a nearby police station was hit Friday in a U.S.-Israeli strike in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
