• Indiana Pacers 119, New York Knicks 117

The NBA has a dog days of spring when players begin to either rest up for the playoffs, or check out mentally on a season that will end promptly in the middle of April with a lottery appearance impending. This is the perfect time for a player like Tyler Hansbrough to outwork everyone and combine his high energy, high effort with a jumper that is falling and you have a dangerous player. Hansbrough was 8-for-11 on his jumpers, scoring 30 points on just 17 shots.

Hansbrough has an FIC40 of 15.2 in March and 17.7 over his last five games where he is averaging 22.6 per night on 55.7% shooting.

Pairing Hansbrough’s performance, which has been outstanding throughout March, with the kind of outing the Pacers received from Danny Granger (sweet game-winner), Roy Hibbert (15 and 12 with three blocks) and Darren Collison (24 points and nine assists) and you get the makings of a team that should snag that eighth seed.

For New York, they allowed points on eight of Indiana’s final nine possessions. I can excuse inept defense in the first half, but the Pacers are not nearly good enough offensively to not get more than one stop down the stretch.

• Atlanta Hawks 110, Milwaukee Bucks 85

Joe Johnson donned a sporty black headband and made 36 points on 19 shots, converting on six of his nine three-point attempts and four of his seven two-point jumpers. He’s a great individual scorer and becomes elite when he’s hitting like this from the perimeter.

Milwaukee simply can’t win games when their defense allows an eFG% of 70.5%.

• Chicago Bulls 98, Washington Wizards 79

The Bulls surpassed the Celtics in the Eastern Conference despite missing both Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah. But you don’t need a whole lot to beat the Wizards on your own floor (with three starters out), especially when Tom Thibodeau is your head coach.

At least we were treated to 12 offensive and 38 rebounds overall between Taj Gibson and Kurt Thomas, along with a Brian Scalabrine sighting.

And oh yeah, JaVale McGee had a triple double on 12 blocked shots.

• Portland Trail Blazers 104, Dallas Mavericks 101

I wouldn’t object to seeing these two teams battle over seven games in a first round series. Portland was +7 on turnovers, +12 on points in the paint, +14 on second chance points and had LaMarcus Aldridge in his vintage 10-11 mode and Brandon Roy show some glimpses of where he was a few years ago in the second half.

But Dallas still had a chance to send the game into overtime at the end despite scoring their final field goal of the game just barely under three minutes left on a Jason Terry three-pointer.