Once again, March is a big month for Milwaukee.
The All-Star break is over, and the Bucks have 29 games left to position themselves for postseason seeding and ostensibly win as many games as possible. And I hope the fellas are nice and fresh, because today begins a stretch of five games in seven days. That will happen again another three times in March, from the 11th through the 18th, the 13th through the 20th, and the 15th through the 22nd. They’ll also play six games in eight days from the 8th through the 16th.
That’s not too different than last season: in both campaigns, the Bucks are/were scheduled for 14 games during March, with an even split of home and away. That being said, folks around the Bucks media sphere began noting even before New Year’s that Doc Rivers and company have their work cut out for them as the season reaches its peak. Back when the schedule was unveiled last summer, I noted that the March 2025 schedule—despite three back-to-backs—didn’t look quite as difficult as the lineup in March 2024, outside of “two matchups with Dallas, an away game in Denver, and home dates with OKC and New York.” I also mentioned this:
Last March, they had a notoriously difficult slate of games after the All-Star break with a California road trip followed by the Suns and Sixers waiting for them at home, then a trip to Boston… Top contenders tend to play a lot of nationally televised marquee games in March as the playoffs approach, but it feels like unlike last year, the NBA isn’t including the Bucks in on this.
One thing is for sure: the NBA’s broadcast partners are missing out on a few big clashes for the Bucks, like when they face the Cavaliers on March 9th, the Lakers on March 20th, and the Knicks on March 28th. Before I unpack the my other statements, though, here’s a reminder of how last March went for the Bucks—who went a respectable 8-6 against some stiff competition—and who they were facing:
There were 13 contests where the opponent was clearly trying to make the playoffs/play-in, including two facing the top two teams in the league by record. Indeed, that baker’s dozen all had winning records when Milwaukee faced them, and all finished with winning records. There were only three tilts versus sub-.500 squads, two of which ignominiously ended up as the bottom two in the East play-in, and another that was clearly tanking. The average winning percentage of the Bucks’ March foes—both at the time they squared off with them and how they finished the year—was .576, equivalent to a 47-win team.
This year? Well, it looked a bit tougher prior to the deadline, thanks to a certain trade down in Texas (and that team’s subsequently depleted frontcourt). But it still ended up being a marquee schedule that’s not easy by any stretch. Per Tankathon.com, the Bucks have the seventh-toughest remaining schedule with a .524 strength of schedule the rest of the way. That’s the toughest among all Eastern teams, albeit just barely ahead of the Knicks’ slate of 28 games.
If we average out their opponents’ winning percentages as of today, it amounts to .603, approximately a 49-win team. If you look at how they finished last season, they averaged .591, or 48 wins. A little bit harder than last year by a win or two, mainly because there isn’t a tanker and the two best teams (Cleveland and OKC) are winning at a significantly higher clip than those of last year (Boston and OKC).
But I actually see many similarities to 2024’s numerically easier March. Like last year, 11 of the Bucks’ 14 opponents are currently above .500, though five of them are close enough to break even for that number to go up or down. And while all 14 feature an opponent jockeying for position—too bad a tanker isn’t present this year like Brooklyn was last year (wait…) among their conference’s top six or play-in—three of them feature a team currently on the outside looking in (Phoenix) or in the lowly play-in territory of the East (Atlanta, twice). That’s really not all too different than a year ago.
So perhaps I was a bit off in thinking that March 2025 looked easier than March 2024. Is it any harder, though? Your mileage may vary, but I tend to think no. Like I said, it ended up being more intense than it appeared in August; we knew the Thunder and Nuggets would be really good, but did we think the Cavs would be this good? The Mavs and Lakers would swap superstars? Or that the Warriors would have Jimmy Butler and the Knicks would have Karl-Anthony Towns? Hard to predict all that, but still, if you slice things differently, it all looks less intimidating.
The other good news is that April looks manageable. You’ll recall that Giannis strained his soleus against Boston last April 9th, but Milwaukee had dropped their previous four games to Washington, Memphis, Toronto, and New York. Those first three all lost more than 55 games, and the Bucks slumped to a 2-6 record in April. Then they had to play two playoff teams—the Thunder and Magic—thrice but without Giannis, plus missing Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton for a game apiece.
This April, they also have eight games: Phoenix, Philadelphia, Miami, New Orleans, Minnesota, New Orleans again, and Detroit twice to finish. Only the Wolves and Pistons are above .500 today, and the Pelicans are at the very bottom of the West. Giannis is currently nursing another calf injury, but if he’s healthy by then (he practiced yesterday, for the record), it’s easy to imagine a strong finish to the 2025 season, or at least not the whimper we saw in 2024.
Just for giggles, let’s take a look at what happened during the infamous 2-8 stretch to begin the year:
Thanks to the tank job in Utah and the disaster in Philly, this averages out to a .529 winning percentage: a 43-win squad. Even if you look at last year’s standings, the dramatic turnarounds in Memphis and Cleveland come out to .516, or a 42-40 record. So while this looked to be a really hard schedule at the time, given the dual matchups with the Cavs and Celtics, plus a very tough road matchup with the Grizzlies, it looks different now that we know more about those teams.
In the end, it was six matchups with four of the five best teams in the NBA by record, then four much easier ones. A 4-6 record would have been understandable, maybe even expected, though obviously not ideal. Of course, a Donovan Mitchell buzzer-beater and Giannis sitting out two days later in a two-point loss meant that they were at least close to 4-6, even with blowouts to New York and Memphis. Milwaukee’s struggles with Brooklyn and even Chicago are emblematic of two of their three rough stretches this season: these first 10 and when they dropped four of five around New Year’s.
Moreover, despite differences in record—they were 35-21 coming off the break last year as compared to 29-24 now—and three fewer games played, the Bucks might not be in such a dramatically different place now than they were 365 days ago. Plenty of fans feel that this year’s team is superior to last year’s in many ways, even though they’d need to go 20-9 to get the same win-loss total. Unlike last year, however, the Bucks are looking up at their March lineup instead of down from the East’s second or third seed. Maybe that vantage point will give them the juice they need to close out 2025 on a high note.