Bucks' turnaround driven by easy schedule

After a miserable 2-8 start, the Milwaukee Bucks have turned their season around by winning nine of their last 10 games. But the team may not have gotten dramatically better as much as their opponents have gotten dramatically worse.

On Tuesday night, Milwaukee beat the Detroit Pistons, 128-107, for its seventh straight win. Only one of those wins was against a team with a winning record, the 15-7 Houston Rockets. The Bucks have won nine of their last 10, and the Rockets are still the only winning team in that stretch.

Milwaukee might be playing better, but it has also faced the 2-17 Washington Wizards, the 6-15 Charlotte Hornets and the 9-14 Detroit Pistons during this win streak. It has faced the Hornets and Pistons twice in its last 10 games, plus the 7-15 Toronto Raptors. The teams it beat during this streak have a cumulative winning percentage of .399, and the Bucks played five of those games at home.

Compare that to their brutal opening 10 games, where they faced the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers twice each. They also had to play the fourth-place teams in each conference, the New York Knicks and Memphis Grizzlies. All six of those games were losses.

Aside from their opening-night game against a Philadelphia 76ers team missing Paul George and Joel Embiid, the Bucks didn't win a road game until Nov. 26. They're 8-3 at home in Milwaukee and 3-6 everywhere else.

That doesn't mean the Bucks' improved record isn't real, but don't be surprised if they show some regression in the next week. That's when they'll face the Atlanta Hawks (four-game win streak), the Celtics and Brooklyn Nets on the road, and the third-place Orlando Magic.

The Bucks weren't as bad as they looked when they were 2-8. They're also not as good as they've looked in their recent 7-0 run. We'll get a better sense of whether the Bucks truly are a contender once we see how they fare against some teams that will make the playoffs.