Say what you want about the quality of basketball played in the Eastern Conference, but the final month of the season has, and will continue to be, an entertaining follow as the race for the final playoff spots intensifies.

After the Milwaukee Bucks edged the Miami Heat on Khris Middleton’s improbable game-winning three on Tuesday night, the battle among five teams for the seventh and eighth seeds shifted even closer. The victory gave the Bucks some breathing room in sixth-place, but they have lost six of seven amid a post-trade deadline skid.

Miami, meanwhile, had to quickly shake off the painful loss to prepare for another important game against the Celtics in Boston.

“We did have to meet [Wednesday] just to reconnect and refocus,” Erik Spoelstra said of how the Heat turned the page. “We are still in control of our own destiny right now. Last night, as disappointing as that loss was, we have to regroup quickly and move on. It’s about correctively bringing a toughness and grit in a big game.”

The Bucks outscored the Heat 24-9 in the fourth quarter on Tuesday, setting the stage for the thrilling outcome. Middleton’s three left Spoelstra to divide his time between games planning for the Celtics and ruminating on the loss in Milwaukee.

“You have to go through that process, as painful as it is,” he said of second-guessing himself. “I went through that last night on the plane, it’s like kicking yourself in the gut over and over and over. Then you wake up in the morning and you feel even worse and go through that process again. I think you owe it to the team to do that. Things that are objective and things that I would have done differently. I would have liked to, in one of the six timeouts, gotten us a good, clean look coming out of it.”

At some point over the next few weeks, Spoelstra’s contemporaries will all go through the same wave of self-doubt.

Here’s how the East standings looked heading into Wednesday night’s action:

The regular season won’t end for another three weeks, but the night’s action was littered with playoff implications. The Bucks, fresh off the Middleton Miracle, were the only inactive team involved in the race and two games featured head-to-head battles between contenders.

The Indiana Pacers traveled to face the Washington Wizards, while the Celtics hosted the Heat and Brooklyn Nets battled the Charlotte Hornets at Time Warner Cable Arena. At various points in the evening, the standings shifted significantly.

The Hornets led the Nets 46-42 at halftime, while the Celtics trailed the Heat for a majority of the first half in Boston. If those margins held, the Hornets would leapfrog the Celtics for eighth place. 

However, Brooklyn rallied in the second half and held an advantage over Charlotte in the third quarter. While that was going on the Pacers took a slim lead over the Wizards early in the third period of their own game, setting in motion another potential seeding swap. An Indiana win, coupled with a Charlotte loss, would allow the Pacers to gain a half-game lead for ninth place.

… but that’s not all.

At a little after 8:30 PM EST the Pacers led, while the Hornets and Celtics both trailed. If those three margins held Boston and Indiana would move into a tie for eighth at 31-40. The Celtics would hold onto the eighth seed because they currently have the advantage in the season series (2-1). The two clubs will face off in Boston next Wednesday in yet another load contest.

Most players and coaches insist that they don’t dwell on the standings, but Isaiah Thomas isn’t one of those players. He returned to action for the Celtics against the Heat after missing eight games.

“I do. I don’t know about anyone else, but I do,” he said when asked if he keeps tabs on the race in the East. “All I do is watch basketball – other team’s games, those in the playoff hunt, I look at the schedule, the standings and all that. I’ve never been in this position before -- the playoff race -- it’s fun, but it’s also hectic.”

Here’s a breakdown of what could have transpired in the East based on Wednesday’s results.

The best case for the Heat would have been a victory over the Celtics, a Washington win over Indiana and Charlotte loss to Brooklyn. That would have given them at least a two-game cushion for the seventh seed over all teams in the hunt. It also would move them just two games back of the Bucks for sixth.

The best case for the Celtics was a win over the Heat, moving them into a tie for seventh (the season series would be split 2-2, but Boston would win the tiebreaker via division record), and losses by the Hornets and Pacers. Such a series of outcomes would move them to seventh while creating space between those clubs looking to scratch back in.

Charlotte’s ideal scenario would be a win over Brooklyn, a Celtics’ loss to the Heat and Washington triumph over Indiana. Those three outcomes would move them into eighth over Boston and give them a 1.5-game lead over Indiana moving forward.

The Pacers weren’t going head-to-head with their direct competition, but needed a win over the Wizards nonetheless. They entered the game losers of sixth straight and in 10th place. A win, along with victories by Miami and Brooklyn, would move them into the aforementioned tie with Boston for eighth while moving ahead of Charlotte.

The Nets, who entered the night in the worst position of all six teams, had a chance to move a half-game within a playoff berth. All they needed to do was beat the Hornets, watch the Heat tame the Celtics and Wizards edge the Pacers. That would have moved them from 11th to 9th, tied with Charlotte at 30-40. The Nets and Hornets split their two previous meetings, making Wednesday’s game even more important in tie-breaking situations.

Brad Stevens, coaching for a playoff spot in just his second season, doesn’t fall into the same category as Thomas, one of his most important players. Just two years removed from enjoying March Madness at Butler, Stevens doesn’t make a point to discuss the standings and playoff implications of single games with his players.

“You hear people talking about it, but I don’t,” Stevens said before the Celtics and Heat tipped off. “I see these guys a lot; we talk a lot. We’re just trying to play good basketball and I don’t hear guys talking about it. We are all aware generally aware, some more acutely than others, of the standings, but we just know we have to play better.”

In about an hour on Wednesday night, the playoff race in the East moved in a number of directions.  You saw the standings entering the night’s games above, but they took three different forms before the day was over.

9:24 PM: Brook Lopez turned the ball over with three seconds left and the Nets leading the Hornets 91-88. What could have turned into a disaster for Brooklyn was avoided when Lopez, guarding the inbounding Gerald Henderson, tipped the ball away and sealed the victory. The win momentarily pushed the Nets past the Pacers and into a tie with the Hornets for the No. 9 seed. Brooklyn now holds the tiebreaker over Charlotte as the playoff race gets tighter.

9:43 PM: Shortly after the Nets’ win, the Pacers were in the process of completing a furious comeback in Washington. Indiana trailed by double-digits in the fourth quarter, but had a three-point lead with less than 20 seconds left until John Wall drilled a clutch three. George Hill wanted no part of overtime and hit the game-winner on a drive to the basket off a familiar pick-and-roll with David West. When the buzzer sounded at the Verizon Center, the standings in the East had shifted yet again. Indiana’s win allowed them to surpass Brooklyn, while also clearing Charlotte by a half-game. In less than 30 minutes, the Pacers went from tenth to eleventh to ninth.

10:05 PM: The final game with playoff implications ended much more dramatically than initially expected in Boston. The Heat, without Dwyane Wade, Hassan Whiteside or Chris Andersen, led the Celtics by 22 points in the third quarter. Undeterred, the Celtics clawed their way back into the game, cutting the lead to 89-83 with 1:59 remaining, before running out of gas. Miami’s 93-86 victory wouldn’t change the seeding of the six teams jostling for position, but it did tighten the race for both the sixth and eighth seeds.

With the season winding down, the East playoff race figures to fluctuate every night as it did on Wednesday. What’s clear is that the intensity will be palpable. Six technical fouls were called, including five in a Celtics-Heat game that was missing the two Big Threes that figured so prominently in their recent rivalry. The Pacers and Bucks will face off on Thursday and from now until the end of the regular season we’ll see nine games featuring head-to-head tilts between teams trying to elbow their way into better postseason standing.