Perhaps it should not come as a surprise, considering the muddled race for playoff position. But teams battling for the final seeds in the Eastern Conference find themselves still searching for identity, at this late juncture, little more than a month from the close of the season.

For example:

How reliant are the Hornets on Jamal Mashburn?

Since Mashburn's recent return from an abdominal injury, Charlotte stands 5-2 when the former Heat forward scores 20 or more, 1-5 when he doesn't.

Mashburn claims his 42 games as a spectator helped him overcome his thin-skinned tendencies of the past.

"While I was out and watching games, I learned to analyze things and not take some things as hard as I had before," he said. "I take the approach that a missed shot is a missed shot and that the next one will go in."

In need of ball movement, Hornets coach Paul Silas backed off his plan of playing guard David Wesley off the bench and instead has been going with forward George Lynch in reserve. That has allowed Mashburn to move back to his natural small forward from shooting guard.

Deciding he could not fully integrate his four trading-deadline acquisitions into his offense, Pacers coach Isiah Thomas has vowed to win with defense the rest of the way.

"I don't think these guys will be comfortable with each other until next year after training camp," Thomas said. "I'm not worried about that right now. The main thing is to get solid defensively as quickly as you can.

"You're not going to be able to do two things at once at this point in the season. You have to make your bed on the defensive side of the ball and hopefully you can manufacture points."

The 76ers, who face the Heat twice this week, are feeling good about themselves, but also are maintaining a perspective.

"It depends on the night you catch us," forward Matt Harpring said. "We can play really well. Potentially, we can be the team to beat. But everyone's in the rat race right now. Everyone's right there in the middle."

The Raptors are not hiding their desperation.

"Right now, if there are 16 games left, to be honest, I think we have to win 11 or 12 of them," power forward Antonio Davis said. "It's that simple."

An 11-5 finish would put the Raptors at 41-41. Such a streak also would be the best of the season for Toronto, which has lost 15 of 16.

Forward Keon Clark said the Raptors have become more myth than reality.

"We're still the same team, but what are you going to do?" he told the Toronto Sun of lofty preseason predictions. "That's on paper. It's different. The paper ain't out there playing. We ain't got no paper figures out there.

"You look on paper and it's like, `OK, we've got one of the better teams in the East, we're going to crush people.'"