WASHINGTON, April 14 (Ticker) -- A clutch 3-pointer by Reggie Miller allowed the Indiana Pacers to breathe a sigh of relief.

Battling for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, the Pacers struggled with the Washington Wizards but emerged with an 86-80 victory and remained tied with the Milwaukee Bucks.

Milwaukee (40-40) defeated Charlotte and owns the tiebreaker advantage over Indiana.

Jermaine O'Neal led the Pacers (40-40) with 26 points, including a pair of layups in a 10-0 run that opened an 80-72 lead with 5:25 left.

NBA TV highlights from Pacers-Wizards: 56k | 300k Etan Thomas grabs one of his 10 rebounds against the Pacers. Mitchell Layton NBAE/Getty Images

However, the Wizards scored the next six points, pulling within 80-78 on a dunk by Courtney Alexander with just over four minutes remaining.

Alexander stole the ball from Brad Miller and raced in for an uncontested dunk that prompted Pacers coach Isiah Thomas to call timeout and ask his most veteran player to come up big.

"I just asked him if he could make a shot right now because we needed the shot and he said, 'Yeah'," Thomas said. "So we drew up the play, he came out and put it right in the hole as he normally does. It was a big shot."

Reggie Miller connected on a 3-pointer with 3:02 left and the Wizards went nearly three minutes without a basket.

"I didn't have a lot of opportunities tonight," Miller said. "But after that timeout, he (Thomas) asked me how I felt. I was a little tired, but our offense was a little stale. We needed some type of game-breaker and I said, 'Draw up the play and I hit the three'."

Reggie Miller finished with 10 points on 4-of-8 shooting in 37 minutes.

Miller's 3-pointer was Indiana's last basket. The Pacers made only three foul shots the rest of the way, but lucked out because of Washington's drought.

Rookie Kwame Brown's layup with 1:18 left ended the dry spell and made it 84-80. Chris Whitney missed a potential game-tying jumper with 22 seconds left, and Brad Miller sank two free throws with 15 seconds left for the final margin.

"I'm disappointed that we lost," Wizards coach Doug Collins said. "We took some bad shots at the end, but the game was there for us and we couldn't get anything going offensively. We were in a cement offensively in the fourth quarter and we couldn't get in a rhythm."

"I just trying to dig down and find a way to get a win," O'Neal said. "That wasn't the best of games. Obviously we didn't play well. We're very fortunate to pull it out towards the end."

Early on, it looked like the Pacers would turn the game into a rout as they jumped out to a 30-18 lead after one period.

But behind a spirited effort from Bobby Simmons, Brown and Tyronn Lue in the second quarter, the Wizards roared back with a 16-4 run that tied it at 34-34 with 6:01 left.

Indiana's final two games are against Cleveland and Philadelphia. Milwaukee concludes with Toronto and Detroit. The Pacers have not missed the playoffs since 1997.

"The tiebreaker is going to hurt us," Pacers center Brad Miller said. "But we can't do much about that. We've got two games left and they're the biggest games of the season."