BREAKING: Boston Celtics Set for a Big Break This Season with Favorable Schedule.

The full schedule for the 2024-25 NBA season has been released, which gives each team a chance to look at the quirks and prepare accordingly.

Though strength of schedule isn’t as much of a factor in the NBA as it is in the NFL, things such as back-to-back games, stretches of games against difficult opponents, and rest days for both teams coming into a game do differ for each NBA franchise.

According to one analytics organization’s strength of schedule metric (Positive Residual), the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics will have the league’s fourth-easiest schedule, while the 2023 champion Denver Nuggets will have the easiest schedule, via Celtics reporter Daniel Donabedian.

Many people feel the Celtics got several big breaks during the 2024 NBA Playoffs, as several star players in the Eastern Conference were down with injuries.

They faced the Miami Heat, the team that outlasted them in seven games in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals, in the first round, and the Heat were without Jimmy Butler, their best player and clutch performer extraordinaire.

Donovan Mitchell, the star player of their second-round opponents, the Cleveland Cavaliers, was banged up, and in the meantime, the New York Knicks, whom some thought could give Boston a run for its money, had multiple players dealing with injury.

Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks didn’t play at all in the playoffs with a calf injury, and Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers struggled to find consistency after working his way back from a meniscus injury.

The Nuggets will look a bit different this coming season — starting shooting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope left to join the Orlando Magic while Denver brought in mercurial Russell Westbrook — but they still have stars Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray.

Now it is up to both Boston and Denver to take advantage of the advantages in their respective schedules and make a run at another Larry O’Brien Trophy.