The Indiana Pacers are currently in 7th place in the Eastern Conference. But this doesn’t mean much. The order of the seven teams that have a realistic shot at finishing in the final three playoff slots keeps changing day by day.
Here is where they all stand as of today.
Of these seven squads, only the Milwaukee Bucks look like a sure thing to make the postseason. And the Detroit Pistons seem to be nearly out of contention, barring some miraculous late-season turnaround. (If only they had another Josh Smith to waive …)
So, really, we’re talking about five teams (Indiana, Miami, Charlotte, Brooklyn, and Boston) battling for the final two spots.
In my view, the Pacers are a lock.
They are the only one of these teams playing high-level basketball right now. I cannot foresee Indiana continuing its current pace of winning — they’ve won 11 of their past 13 — but I also can’t see them winning any less than 10 of their final 20 games.
They are healthy, hitting on all cylinders, and have simply looked like a different — good — team since George Hill returned to the starting lineup. For awhile, this success could have been an illusion, but it has been going on for five weeks now and included too many wins over good teams for them to completely unravel now.
I am convinced that the Pacers will be — at worst — a .500 team going forward and perhaps more like .600.
They are simply better, right now, than the Miami Heat and Charlotte Hornets. The Heat have lost Chris Bosh for the season, have not gotten as much of a Goran Dragic boost as expected (party due to injury), and are sitting by idly while big man wunderkind Hassan Whiteside keeps getting ejected from games.
The Hornets have been playing well of late, but they scored 23 points in the entire second half last night at home in a loss to the Wizards. Plus they have a five-game road trip coming up and play four of their final six games of the year away from home. And those late-season road games will be difficult: at Miami, at Atlanta, at Detroit, and at Toronto. Given the season they’ve had and their struggles to score, I simply do not trust Charlotte to get crucial wins in big games away from home against quality opponents.
So, sure, I may be overly optimistic here, and Pacers fans know better than anyone how quickly regular season success can disappear. But I think Indy is in.
And while we’re being optimistic, let’s just ask: Can the Pacers catch the Bucks for the 6th seed?
Let’s break it down in depth.
Next: Pacers vs. Bucks Overview
The Value of the Indiana Pacers Getting the 6th Seed
If the Indiana Pacers gets into the playoffs with the 7th or 8th seed, it will be nice for fans. The team will get a few extra games in the heated playoff environment and that will be fun. But in that scenario, all evidence points to the Pacers getting bounced in five or six games by the Atlanta Hawks or Cleveland Cavaliers.
If they get the 6th seed, however, the second round could be possible.
One of Toronto, Chicago, or Washington will get the 3 seed and match up with the 6 seed in the first round. The Pacers would certainly be an underdog against any of those teams. But winning a 7-game series against any of them is not out of the question. It is infinitely possible in a way that beating the Cavs and Hawks most certainly is not.
But can they catch Milwaukee? Is this realistic or just a pipe dream?
They are currently 4.5 games back and that is a ton of ground to make up in 20 games. For more perspective, here is where each team stands currently.
That doesn’t tell us much, so the next step to seeing if it’s realistic is to look at who each team has to play for the rest of the year.
Below is the remaining strength of schedule for the teams contending for the 6, 7, and 8 seeds. The column of note here is “ROWP,” remaining opponent winning percentage, and you will see that there isn’t much difference among the teams with the best chances to finish this musical chairs game in spots 7 and 8.
The Pacers have a slightly more difficult remaining schedule, but just by a few percentage points. We’re not talking about a meaningful difference in strength of schedule.
Here is a further drill down of just Indiana and Milwaukee.
The upside is that Indiana has one more game (20) than Milwaukee (19) to control its own destiny. The downside is that it’s a road game. But the Pacers do have a slightly more favorable home opponent sheet left, in terms of W/L percentage, while the Bucks have a much easier road schedule remaining. Each team has four back to backs.
Just looking at these numbers, it would seem like the Bucks should coast into the sixth seed. But this isn’t the whole story.
The following five reasons show why Indiana could surpass Milwaukee.
Next: The Bucks' Struggle
1. The Bucks Have Been Awful Since Brandon Knight Left
The Milwaukee Bucks have gone just 3-7 since trading away Brandon Knight. The only teams they’ve beaten are the Denver Nuggets (which have a 23-41 record), the Philadelphia 76ers (14-49), and Washington Wizards (an ongoing dumpster fire).
Meanwhile, they’ve lost to the Lakers, Jazz, and the aforementioned Nuggets.
They are struggling to beat even bad teams. Since the All-Star break, they are scoring a league-worst 90 points per game, committing a league-worst 17.6 turnovers per game, and getting outscored by 4.6 points per 100 possessions.
They miss Brandon Knight.
Badly.
And there isn’t a lot of evidence that they are still a good team. They played well last night against the Pelicans and The Greek Freak scored a career high. But Anthony Davis ripped their heart out with some clutch hoops, and they could only muster 19 points in the fourth quarter — including ZERO in the final two minutes.
They simply cannot score anymore. And it’s hard to win basketball games that way.
The Bucks were a great story early in the season, and they looked like a lock to win 45 games. Now, they will need to go 8-11 over their final 19 games just to finish the season at .500 — and it no longer looks likely to happen.
Next: Head to Head Opportunities
2. The Indiana Pacers Play the Bucks Two More Times
The Indiana Pacers play the Milwaukee Bucks two more times, once at home and once up north. Winning both of these games would turn the Bucks’ current 4.5 game lead into 2.5, and mean Indiana would only need to gain two other games on them in the other 18 remaining contests.
So getting these two games is mandatory to getting the 6 seed.
The first matchup is Thursday in Indiana, and the Bucks will be heading to Naptown on the second night of a back to back after playing Orlando in Milwaukee.
This is game the Pacers should win.
The other matchup comes in Milwaukee on March 26, and the Pacers will be heading to Beer City (do people call it that?) on the second night of a back to back after playing the Wizards in Washington.
Overall, I would say the slight edge here goes to the Bucks, but the Pacers have looked like the better of the two teams for awhile now, so this is basically a push. The outcome to bet on is each team winning on its home floor, but if the Pacers can take both, they’ll have a shot to wrestle away the 6 seed.
Next: Milwaukee's Home Schedule
3. The Milwaukee Bucks’ Brutal Home Schedule
The axiom to be a good team in the NBA is to win most of your home games and then go .500 on the road. Both the Cavaliers and Spurs are exactly .500 on the road this year, for example. The Blazers are just one game over .500 and the Wizards are a dreadful 14-18 away from the nation’s capital.
So to hold onto their spot, the Bucks — which are pretty decent on the road — need to take care of business at home.
Here are their remaining home opponents.
- Magic
- Spurs
- Cavaliers
- Heat
- Pacers
- Warriors
- Bulls
- Magic
- Cavaliers
- Nets
- Celtics
So, yeah … good luck with that, Milwaukee.
Certainly, the Bucks should beat the Magic (twice), Nets, and Celtics. But how many of the other eight games will they win? Two? Zero? If they stumble — especially in any of the four easy games — they could be looking at a very rough end to the year.
It is certainly conceivable that they could go 3-8 or 4-7 in these final 11 games in Milwaukee.
Next: Milwaukee's Home Schedule
4. Indiana Faces Fewer Top-Tier Opponents
The Milwaukee Bucks have more games left that look “unwinnable.” This is in part because they are struggling so much of late, but it’s also just because they have some behemoths left to play.
Six of the Bucks’ remaining games are against the Warriors, Hawks, Grizzlies, Cavs, and Spurs. We can probably slot them in for an 0-6 in those contests.
If the Pacers have a best-case outcome against Milwaukee — beating them twice — then that’s already 8 losses for the Bucks.
The certainly have plenty of cupcakes left, too, so 10-8 is probably in play. But I presume they will slip up more against the dregs than the Pacers will. .
Meanwhile, I presume Indiana is more likely to upset some of the big dogs left on their plate.
But wait a minute here. The Pacers play some teams with excellent records, too: the Grizzlies, Rockets, Mavs, Cavs, and Thunder.
This is true, but the Mavericks are just 5-5 in their last 10. And the Pacers play Memphis on the final day of the season, so it’s quite possible that guys like Marc Gasol and Mike Conley might get the night off.
Ultimately, it is a long shot for Indiana to get the 6th seed. But if Milwaukee doesn’t take care of business against some of the bad teams they have to face and the Pacers can win both head-to-head matchups, it will be close.
A few weeks ago, asking the Indiana Pacers to close the season 13-7 — or better — would seems just as ridiculous as predicting the Milwaukee Bucks to finish 8-11 — or worse.
Now both are in play. And if both those conceivable records happen, both the Pacers and Bucks will finish the season at 41-41. And if Indiana wins these last two game against Milwaukee, the Pacers will take the 6th seed with tiebreaker — and have a chance at making the second round.
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