{"id":222619,"date":"2025-08-10T09:02:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/222619\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T09:02:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:02:22","slug":"phoenix-suns-not-playing-on-christmas-for-the-2025-26-nba-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/222619\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix Suns not playing on Christmas for the 2025-26 NBA season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;right:0;bottom:0;width:100%;height:100%;z-index:2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/85495099007-2226394028.jpg\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"vidplayicon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/appservices\/universal-web\/universal\/icons\/icon-play-alt-white.svg\" alt=\"play\" style=\"height:40px;margin:auto 18px auto 27px;width:40px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Damian Lillard shares his thoughts on Suns&#8217; Devin Booker<\/p>\n<p>NBA veteran Damian Lillard complimented Devin Booker as a special talent and a key player for the Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n<p>The Phoenix Suns will not play on Christmas Day for the 2025-26 NBA season.This breaks a four-year streak of Christmas Day games for the Suns.<\/p>\n<p>The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/phoenix-suns\/21\/\" data-autotag=\"5b1d8499-f4c6-4857-a8e9-6d2e8a35bac3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Phoenix Suns<\/a> aren&#8217;t on the NBA\u2019s Christmas list this year.<\/p>\n<p>The Suns aren&#8217;t playing on the holiday for the upcoming 2025-26 season, the Arizona Republic has confirmed though league sources.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN\u2019s Shams Charania tweeted Friday the league\u2019s five-game Christmas slate.<\/p>\n<p>The Suns played on Christmas the previous four seasons.<\/p>\n<p>2021 \u2013 Golden State Warriors 116, Phoenix Suns 107.2022 \u2013 Denver Nuggets 128,\u00a0Phoenix Suns 125 (OT).2023 \u2013 Dallas Mavericks 128, Phoenix Suns 114.2024 \u2013 Phoenix Suns 110, Denver Nuggets 100.<\/p>\n<p>Charania also reported the NBA\u2019s opening night schedule Oct. 21, featuring the Houston Rockets at the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Golden State Warriors at the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/los-angeles-lakers\/13\/\" data-autotag=\"4d34a300-3059-4ec4-a4d3-4d636ac95816\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The opener will be a return game for Kevin Durant to Oklahoma City, the franchise (then based in Seattle) that drafted him in 2007.<\/p>\n<p>The Suns traded Durant to the Rockets before the 2025 draft.<\/p>\n<p>Phoenix is coming off a 36-win season in which they missed the playoffs for the first time since 2019-20, which was the last time it had a losing record before last season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"exclude-from-newsgate\">(This story has been updated to add new information.)<\/p>\n<p>Have opinions about the current state of the\u00a0Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:dmrankin@gannett.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dmrankin@gannett.com<\/a>\u00a0or contact him at 480-810-5518. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DuaneRankin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">@DuaneRankin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Support local journalism: Subscribe to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cm.azcentral.com\/specialoffer?gps-source=CPNEWS&amp;utm_medium=onsite&amp;utm_source=TAGLINE&amp;utm_campaign=NEWSROOM&amp;utm_content=JEREMYCLUFF\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">azcentral.com<\/a>\u00a0today.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Damian Lillard shares his thoughts on Suns&#8217; Devin Booker NBA veteran Damian Lillard complimented Devin Booker as a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[2126,299,7,4346,306,17787,311,305,193,686,149,301,187,4674,2292,2133,2127,130,133,309,164,2125,292,194,131,1936,938,300,298,150,166,70,85,6,62,67,302,310,179,61,81,2065,472,4045,211,66,83,17,55,2128,604,312,255],"class_list":{"0":"post-222619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix-suns","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-angeles","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-booker","12":"tag-cavaliers","13":"tag-christmas","14":"tag-city","15":"tag-cleveland","16":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","17":"tag-dallas","18":"tag-dallas-mavericks","19":"tag-denver","20":"tag-denver-nuggets","21":"tag-devin","22":"tag-devin-booker","23":"tag-durant","24":"tag-enabled","25":"tag-espn","26":"tag-espn-inc","27":"tag-golden","28":"tag-golden-state-warriors","29":"tag-highlights","30":"tag-houston","31":"tag-houston-rockets","32":"tag-inc","33":"tag-kevin","34":"tag-kevin-durant","35":"tag-lakers","36":"tag-los","37":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","38":"tag-mavericks","39":"tag-national","40":"tag-national-sports","41":"tag-nba","42":"tag-neutral","43":"tag-news","44":"tag-nuggets","45":"tag-oklahoma","46":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","47":"tag-overall","48":"tag-overall-neutral","49":"tag-phoenix","50":"tag-phoenix-suns","51":"tag-phoenixsuns","52":"tag-rockets","53":"tag-sports","54":"tag-sports-news","55":"tag-state","56":"tag-story","57":"tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","58":"tag-suns","59":"tag-thunder","60":"tag-warriors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}