The win wasn’t pretty, but that doesn’t change the fact the Indiana Pacers now hold a tiebreaker over the Milwaukee Bucks. Indiana leads the season series 2-1, but even with one game left between the two, the Bucks can’t make up the gap in Central Division wins.
You might remember from last season how important those tiebreakers were in deciding the Eastern Conference seeding. With fewer than four games separating the third and eighth seeds in the East right now, tiebreakers are likely to factor in again this season.
If Indiana didn’t drop the previous two games to two of the NBA’s worst teams, they would have been in 3rd place right now.