Pacers are 11-23, but in hunt

The Indiana Pacers are 12 games under .500 and tied for the fifth-worst record in the NBA. They have had losing streaks of eight, six, four and three games this season.

Start the John Wall Watch, right?

Not if you play in the Eastern Conference.

The Pacers enter tonight's game at Minnesota (7-29) just four games out of the final playoff spot.

"Amazing, huh?" forward Troy Murphy said. "We'd already know that our summer vacation would start in the middle in April if I was still in Golden State and we had this record. You'd be getting ready for the (NBA draft) lottery if you played in the West."

The East has been top-heavy for several seasons. Losing teams have made the playoffs each of the past four seasons. Just five of the 15 teams have a winning record this season. Ten of the West's 15 teams are above .500. If the playoffs started today, two winning teams would stay home.

"There's just a lot of bad teams. What else can I say?" benched point guard T.J. Ford said last week.

The Pacers have several obstacles to overcome before they can think about participating in the playoffs for the first time since 2006.

Their chemistry has been out of sorts, they have yet to establish consistency, outside of their five-game winning streak earlier this season, and they have to pass five teams just to get to the No. 8 spot.

Tonight will be an interesting case study. The Pacers are coming off an impressive victory over Orlando and face Minnesota, which has the second-worst record in the league.

"The good news is that in the East, you're never really out of it," said swingman Mike Dunleavy, who is trying to regain his form after offseason knee surgery. "You're a winning streak away from being right back in the middle of things. Unfortunately, we have dug ourselves a bit of a hole."

The Pacers are slowly starting to get healthy. All 15 players practiced for the first time in about two years the past two days. All-Star Danny Granger (foot) is practicing and should return in about two weeks.

"We have to grow the young guys, get (Dunleavy's) strength back and try to still be in a playoff race when Danny gets back," coach Jim O'Brien said. "When Danny gets back, we need to be a better team than when he left."

Some fans would rather see the Pacers slide into a high lottery pick, possibly getting lucky enough to earn a shot at Wall -- Kentucky's star freshman guard -- than back into a likely one-and-done first-round matchup against Boston, Cleveland or Orlando and another mid-first-round draft pick.

The Pacers don't see it that way.

President Larry Bird doesn't believe in tanking a season to move up in the lottery, and O'Brien is so competitive that he joked he likes to beat his daughter in checkers.

"What has happened to a large extent over the past couple of weeks is downright irrelevant from the standpoint of our guys getting out and competing for a win," O'Brien said. "You can talk all you want about this didn't happen well or that didn't happen well or this guy's hurt; it's meaningless.

"Get a win. Get a win. That's it. Now, if we can start getting ourselves in a position where we feel that we're playing solidly, then we can talk about where we are within the East."