Ranking each month of the Bucks' 2024-25 schedule by difficulty
The Milwaukee Bucks' 2024-25 NBA schedule has been released, as we are about two months away from the start of the new season. It contains some highly-anticipated contests, starting on opening night and continuing throughout the season.
For the Bucks last season, their schedule was much easier in the front half of the year compared to the back half, and their record reflected this. Milwaukee started 31-13 before firing coach Adrian Griffin with the much tougher part of their schedule coming up.
Injuries combined with the much harder schedule resulted in an 18-20 record in their final 38 games, much worse than how they started.
The schedule can help determine how the season might flow based on when the easy and difficult stretches seem to come, so let's look at how each month of the Bucks' 2024-25 schedule ranks by difficulty.
The Bucks' easiest months
December
December definitely appears to be the easiest month of the season for the Bucks, but it comes with a caveat. The NBA Cup could add a couple more difficult games in December, depending on how the Milwaukee Bucks do, so it is unknown exactly how this month's schedule will look yet.
But based on the games we know will happen, this is the soft part of the Bucks' schedule. Seven of their ten games in December come against teams who had a losing record last season (Pistons, Nets twice, Bulls twice, Wizards and Hawks), and none of those teams are expected to improve much next season.
The only real difficult games this month appear to be road games against the Pacers, Celtics and Cavaliers, but other than that, it's hard to see many losses here for the Milwaukee Bucks as long as they are somewhat healthy.
January
January seems to be another fairly manageable part of the Bucks' schedule. It has several games most would classify as rather easy (Nets, Blazers twice, Raptors twice, Spurs twice) and only a few games that seem like big tests (Sixers, at Knicks and at Magic).
There are several games against solid teams, such as the Kings and Pelicans, but most games in this month seem to be very winnable if the Bucks are near their best. There are a couple of sneaky-tough road games on the second night of back-to-backs against the Heat and Blazers, but for the most part, this is a pretty manageable month for the Milwaukee Bucks.