With the All-Star break over, the NBA season is nearly two-thirds of the way through. At this point, the world has a good idea of what teams should be striving for in the last two months of the year.
For the Bucks, their goal is 70 wins and a championship.
Through the first four months of the season the Milwaukee Bucks have carved through the NBA, securing the best record in the league at 47-8. They’ve been dominant each night. Putting together quite possibly the most underrated season of all-time. The Bucks have the highest point differential in the NBA, winning games by an average of 12.3 points. If the season ended today it would be the third highest point differential of all time. This speaks to their dominance on both sides of the court. They are the only team in the league that is top three in both offense and defense.
Like all great teams, the Bucks win on the road (21–5) almost as much as they do at home (25–3).
The statistical dominance is even more baffling when you consider the Bucks don’t have anyone playing over 31 minutes a night. Giannis Antetokounmpo leads the team in minutes per game, and only ranks 63rd in the league. Four seasons ago when the Golden State Warriors won 73 games, they did so with four players playing as many minutes as Giannis.
The final third of the season will be a challenge, however. Teams would prefer an easier schedule before the playoffs, but the Bucks will not be awarded that luxury. Instead, they will face one of the toughest remaining schedules in the NBA.
In the next 27 games they will play the Toronto Raptors three times, Boston, Philadelphia, and Miami twice, as well as the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets. A particularly brutal stretch of that schedule comes at the beginning of April when they play Toronto in back to back games, then Boston and Philadelphia.
The Bucks are amid one of the greatest seasons of all time, and yet, despite chasing history, have received little national media attention. The best team in the league can’t be ignored forever, and as the playoffs get closer, media attention will increase bringing immense pressure with it. Pressure appeared to get them last year when they lost four straight games in the Eastern Conference Finals, and the year before that when they lost in a Game 7.
Milwaukee has found a way to improve on what was the best record in the NBA last year, and with another year in head coach Mike Budenholzer’s system, the Bucks are confident they will win the franchise’s second ever championship.