The Lakers will remain a fixture on Christmas Day, though with a new opponent this time around.
According to Shams Charania of ESPN, the purple and gold will meet the Rockets on Dec. 25 this year. The matchup will likely be based around LeBron James and Kevin Durant squaring off for one of the final times.
Outside of the LeBron-Durant storyline to this, there isn’t much other intrigue in this game. Luka Dončić has no significant history against the Rockets outside of being an in-state rival with the Mavs.
The only real intrigue this game is going to have is that it’ll be against two teams likely to be near the top of the Western Conference. But on a day when storylines often drive the matchups, putting these two teams together is a head-scratcher.
The two teams have played on Christmas Day before, though, again, there wasn’t much to those games. They met in the inaugural season of the then-San Diego Rockets in 1967. They played again in 2003, though that game seemed to likely be similarly built around a Shaquille O’Neal-Yao Ming matchup.
Ironically, the Rockets won both of those meetings, the only two times they’ve met on Christmas. Houston hasn’t made an appearance on the Christmas schedule since 2019-20 when they played the Warriors.
Last season, the Lakers and Warriors dueled in another LeBron-Steph Curry showdown. While you can’t run that back every year, there are so many more intriguing games that could have gone here. A game against the Mavs felt like the easiest pick, but even games against the Celtics, Wolves or Nuggets all feel like they would have carried a bit more weight.
Nonetheless, the Lakers playing on Christmas is always a treat. Even if it won’t be the most intriguing game, it should still be a competitive game that will draw eyes.