It has come to this: the NBA's most decorated franchise, which hasn't had a sniff of the post-season since 1995, and the defending Eastern Conference champions, are locked in a death match. The rallying cry in both camps: "We're No. 8!"

	Antoine Walker and the Celtics played their best ball down the stretch.

The Eastern Conference pretty much has been narrowed to a nine-team race for eight playoff spots. With 20-something games remaining, the playoff-starved Boston Celtics and the quirky Indiana Pacers are looking more and more like the inevitable candidates for that vaunted, final playoff spot.

How could it have come to this? The Celtics are where they are only because Rick Pitino wisely walked the plank in January, leaving behind a 12-22 team and a lot of up-tight players. Had he stuck around, the Celtics would be battling Atlanta and Chicago for lottery rights. But their resurgence (resuscitation?) under Jim O'Brien, their transparent and passionate lust for any post-season appearance, and the convenient collapses of Cleveland and Detroit have thrust the Celtics into the "race."

Indiana, meanwhile, was supposed to be well beyond such trivial stuff at this point. We all figured the Pacers would take awhile to blend, but, when they did, they would be a 45-50-win team and a playoff lock. Instead, they've labored all season despite an ostensibly enviable roster of playoff veterans and athletic young pups.

	LAST 10 SUB-.500 PLAYOFF TEAMS
	Team	Record	Playoff result
	1997 Clippers	36-46	Lost to Lakers, 3-0
	1996 Kings	39-43	Lost to Sonics, 3-1
	1995 Celtics	35-47	Lost to Magic, 3-1
	1993 Lakers	39-43	Lost to Suns, 3-2
	1992 Heat	38-44	Lost to Bulls, 3-0
	1991 Knicks	39-43	Lost to Bulls, 3-0
	1989 Blazers	39-43	Lost to Lakers, 3-0
	1988 Knicks	38-44	Lost to Celtics, 3-1
	1988 Bullets	38-44	Lost to Pistons, 3-2
	1988 Spurs	31-51	Lost to Lakers, 3-0

The Celtics are making no apologies for their quest to be the eighth best. None. One of O'Brien's first acts as head coach was to remove the Eastern Conference standings board from the locker room. In its place he substituted only the teams who the Celtics are battling to get that coveted eighth spot. We still see Detroit and Cleveland on the list, but we all know neither is going to be anywhere close to the post-season. Indiana has a similar board in its locker room; all the teams in the East are listed. Given the way the East is going, that makes as much sense as anything else does.

Neither team is on a pace to even get close to 41 wins, but neither team seems to care as long as it makes the playoffs. The Celtics only need to look back longingly to that 1995 team, which roared into the post-season with a 35-47 record and then played Orlando very tough before succumbing in the first round in four games. That remains the last team in the Eastern Conference to make the playoffs with a losing record.

Since the league went to the 16-team playoff format, it has been unusual, but hardly unprecedented, for a team to qualify for the post-season with a losing record. Nineteen teams from the East have made the playoffs with a losing record while 15 have made it from the Western Conference. On three occasions, three teams with losing records made it into the playoffs in the same season.

The worst team, record wise, to make it was Michael Jordan's 1986 Bulls, who were a wretched 30-52. But that also was the year that Jordan, who missed most of the season with a foot injury, lit the Celtics up for 63 points in a Game 2 double-overtime loss at Boston Garden, his Coming of Age game in his NBA career. The 1988 San Antonio Spurs have the distinction of being the worst Western Conference playoff team, storming into the post-season with a 31-51 record (the 5-8 record in April must have clinched it.) The Spurs, however, won the lottery that year and the rights to David Robinson.

The Celtics clearly have the Pacers in their collective crosshairs while Indiana is looking ahead and behind. Indiana is as close to Toronto as it is to Boston. The Pacers' schedule the rest of the way is hardly onerous; in March and April they play 27 games with 14 at Conseco Fieldhouse. Of those 27, 11 are against teams with winning records as of the end of the month. That includes three games with the Knicks (two at home) and two with Philadelphia.

The Celtics, however, have a much harder road to hoe. "They packed some pretty good teams in there," Boston guard Randy Brown said. "Our schedule is brutal."

Let's start with the somewhat startling observation that the Celtics have yet to play the Lakers this season. They meet for the first time March 13 at the Staples Center. The Lakers visit Boston on April 6, the last Western Conference team to play the Celtics.

The Celtics have 25 games left in March/April and 12 are at the FleetCenter. Of those 25 games, 15 are against teams with winning records as of March 1. Boston still has three games remaining with Charlotte (two in Boston) and, in addition to the Lakers, has home games against Utah, Philadelphia and San Antonio. The Celtics are through with Detroit and Cleveland, but still have two games left with Washington, Chicago and New Jersey and a singleton at Atlanta.

Most important of all, Indy and Boston still have two games left with each other, certain to be certifiable monsters. So far, the teams have split the first two, with the road team winning each time. Indiana visits Boston on March 30 while the Celtics play their final road game of the season on Friday, the 13th of April in Conseco Fieldhouse. You can already envision what the storyline will be for the loser that day, given the date.

Boston has put together a nice little winning streak at home (six straight) and a win Friday against Utah will result in the longest home streak since 1993. That happened to be the last season the Celtics finished with as many as 40 wins (or a winning record.) Since then, it's been a radical descent for the franchise which has 16 championship banners hanging from the FleetCenter rafters.

Since 1993, every team in the Eastern Conference except the Celtics has had at least one season of 40 or more wins. The Celtics also own the longest current playoff drought in the Eastern Conference. You thus can understand their sense of urgency with the eighth spot so tantalizingly close, even with the vaunted Sixers as a probable opponent.

You have to think Philly is rooting for Indiana. The Pacers knocked Philly out of the post-season the last two years and would be looking for some, uh, serious payback. A Boston-Philadelphia playoff series used to be almost an annual thing in the 1960s and early 1980s, but with significantly more at stake. The two franchises have met 17 times in the postseason, the last time in the conference finals in 1985.

Last season, the Celtics were even closer -- one-half game -- out of the eighth spot with only 16 games to play. They then proceeded to lose 10 in a row to fall out of the "race." Given the wackiness of the Eastern Conference, the Celtics could do the same thing this year and gain on the field. But don't bet on it.

It's pretty hard to envision a team with Reggie Miller, Jalen Rose, Travis Best and Jermaine O'Neal sitting on the sidelines while Vitaly Potapenko & Co. go up against Dikembe Mutombo and Allen Iverson. Those playoff-hardened Pacers aren't about to submit to some perennial wannabe which looks at the eighth spot the way Boris Yeltsin looks at a glass of Stoli. Or are they? They took a sabbatical not too long ago (1996) and would join the Bulls as the latest team to make it to the Finals one year and not make the playoffs the next year.

In Chicago's case, that was by design. The Pacers made some big changes themselves, but the last thing they expected was to be looking up at seven teams on March 1 while trying to keep those pesky, determined Celtics off their tails. That's not why they traded for O'Neal, hired Isiah Thomas, or shelled out millions for Miller, Rose and Austin Croshere.

But it indeed has come to that.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.