With roughly one month to go in the regular season, the playoff race in both the Western Conference and Eastern Conference should be quite an exhilarating one.

For some teams, the schedule is much more difficult than what others face going forward, which can be said about teams like the Indiana Pacers, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and Phoenix Suns.

According to Basketball-Reference, the Pacers and the Thunder are two playoff contenders who happen to have the toughest remaining schedules in the entire league, respectively. The Suns and the Atlanta Hawks, who are both near the bottom of the standings in their conferences, are the next two on the list followed by the West's No. 5 seed, the New Orleans Pelicans.

Tonight, the Pacers (39-28) will travel to take on the Philadelphia 76ers (36-29) at the Wells Fargo Center in a contest that will have an impact on the East's playoff seedings, while the Thunder (40-29) hit the road to square off with the shorthanded Hawks (20-47) at Philips Arena.

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The Thunder simply cannot afford to look past this game on the road against a poor Hawks team, especially considering their schedule after this game is quite brutal going forward. After tonight's game, Oklahoma City's next 11 games are against teams that are currently in their conference's playoff race. Of those 11 contests, only the Spurs (37-30) are currently not at least a No. 8 seed.

This final month of this action-packed 2017-18 regular season should be a very fun spectacle to behold, so be sure to grab plenty of popcorn.