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15. Miami Heat (12)

Tuesday was rough for the Heat, as their 104-99 loss to the Magic cost them possession of the East's No. 8 seed and gave Orlando the head-to-head tiebreaker for the season. Fortunately, Miami came from behind to beat the Mavs by a final of 105-99 on Thursday, moving a half-game back ahead of the Magic.

The remaining schedule features Boston (twice), Toronto, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, but there's a strange silver lining to that rugged slate: Five of Miami's final seven games come away from home, which is actually a positive because the Heat own the third-best road record in the East.

They still boast a top-10 net rating for the month of March, but their season will be decided in April.

14. Orlando Magic (17)

The Magic are doing it with defense. And by "it" we mean elbowing back into the playoff race with a season-high six-game winning streak. Orlando finally fell at Detroit on Thursday, but its run from March 14-26 got it all the way up to 37 victories—a dozen more than it earned last season.

Resiliency has been key. Orlando was down 14 to start the fourth quarter against Memphis on Friday but rallied to win in overtime 123-119. It may have been a season-saver.

Orlando's defensive rating is the best in the league since Feb. 1. That's a massive two-month sample that might surprise the casual fan, even if head coach Steve Clifford seemed to know something significant was happening when he told reporters on Feb. 26: "We're not going to be a top-five offensive team—we don't have that kind of roster—but we can be a top-five defensive team. If we want to win, that's how we have to do it."

13. Indiana Pacers (15)

Indy dominated Denver in Sunday's 124-88 victory, racking up 72 points in the paint and getting 35 points on 13-of-16 shooting from Bojan Bogdanovic. In its very next outing, the Pacers couldn't score at all and suffered a 107-99 loss to the Thunder in Oklahoma City on Wednesday.

Without Victor Oladipo, the Pacers just don't have a reliable playmaker. Darren Collison and Tyreke Evans did much of the ball-handling against the Thunder, and both seemed incapable of making the right reads. Bogdanovic has been excellent, and Myles Turner's interior presence means the Pacers will always get stops. But this group will struggle mightily unless someone in the backcourt starts creating quality looks for teammates.

12. Oklahoma City Thunder (14)

The only teams with worse March offenses than the Thunder are the Knicks and Pacers.

OKC broke off a 24-0 run against Indy on Wednesday, setting the season's high mark for unanswered points in a game. Still, that surge had more to do with the Pacers' lack of shot creation and the Thunder defense than any kind of offensive awakening.

The Thunder went 2-1 this week, which helped erase the memory of last week's four-game losing streak. Russell Westbrook logged a pair of triple-doubles but also shot a combined 18-of-55 from the field.

As long as Westbrook's shot remains broken and OKC's offense can't sniff a league-average production rate, a first-round out feels inevitable.

11. Boston Celtics (10)

The Celtics can't go more than a couple of games without drawing boos from their home crowd these days, and the jeering predictably rained down during Sunday's 116-95 loss to the San Antonio Spurs.

Tuesday's 116-106 win at Cleveland halted a four-game skid, but the underlying disharmony that has defined the Celtics all year looms large. Boston, under .500 since the All-Star break and showing an alarming lack of on-court connectedness as the playoffs approach, hasn't looked more vulnerable all season.