At the beginning of the season, every team has 80 games scheduled with two to be determined later, pending NBA Cup group stage results. For all teams, they count as regular-season contests, including the knockout stage, which are seeded by the standings in group play. For teams that don’t make the knockout round, like this year’s Bucks for the first time ever, the NBA tries to schedule their 81st and 82nd regular-season games against conference foes whom they only had three previously scheduled matchups.
As we noted in September, those teams were Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, Miami, New York, and Orlando for Milwaukee this year. The latter three all made the knockout round alongside the Cavs, and the Bucks might have lucked out here: they’ll play the Celtics and Nets as their two additional opponents in a couple weeks, one at home. As announced by the NBA and the team today, here are the details:
* Thursday, December 11th vs. the Boston Celtics at Fiserv Forum, 7 p.m. Central
* Sunday, December 14th vs. the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center, 5 p.m. Central
As usual, both of these tilts will be televised on FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin. After the Nets game, the Bucks will actually have three days off around the NBA Cup title bout on December 16th before resuming with the Raptors at home on Thursday the 18th. In a way, having three of the teams they play only thrice this regular season make the knockout field benefitted Milwaukee, as Brooklyn is a weaker opponent on paper, and perhaps Boston is too. But perhaps we need to see how they fare against the Nets tonight first.
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