You\u2019ve heard of the \u201cTwelve Days of Christmas.\u201d If the NBA had its way, you\u2019d be getting the 12 Games of Christmas, beginning with a 6 a.m. (ET) tip-off at The O2 in London.<\/p>\n
As it is, five games are on the menu this Christmas, starting at noon:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Cleveland Cavaliers at New York Knicks, noon<\/p>\n
\u2022 San Antonio Spurs at Oklahoma City Thunder, 2:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Dallas Mavericks at Golden State Warriors, 5 p.m.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Houston Rockets at Los Angeles Lakers, 8 p.m.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Minnesota Timberwolves at Denver Nuggets, 10:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a lot of basketball. In fact, it\u2019s too much basketball. There. Said it. Now, if this ok-boomer, get-off-my-lawn, old-man-yelling-at-cloud, life-was-better-when-we-had-rotary-telephones hot sports take bothers you in any way, you\u2019re invited to stop reading. Just move on to the comments section and proceed with the butchery. Or you can hear me out.<\/p>\n
The mission here isn\u2019t to tell a story about The True Meaning of Christmas. The holiday means many things to many people, from religious services to Yankee swaps. But a common theme has been mostly in place for a long, long time: Families gather. It\u2019s the way my parents raised my brothers, my sister and me, and, so go the stories, it\u2019s the way my parents were raised by their respective immigrant parents. (And do I really need to tell you about all the Jewish families who gather for Chinese food on Christmas? Just got off the phone with a couple of friends who assured me that\u2019s a thing. And then there\u2019s my friend J.D., whose Jewish Christmas tradition is to take the family to Puerto Rico.)<\/p>\n
Never mind watching the games. Think of all the people working the games. As it is, we already have hundreds of thousands of people working on Christmas Day, providing public safety, transportation, food delivery and many other services. Now add the vendors, drivers, ushers, production crews and media outlets that\u2019ll be working all these games. We\u2019re getting ever closer to Christmas being reduced to just another event day instead of a religious observation or a day to spend time with family.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something reassuring about Christmas and its sentimental reminders about where we\u2019re from. It also offers hints as to what\u2019s ahead. Just as I can close my eyes and summon fuzzy Christmas memories of my grandparents, I can listen and watch as my great nieces and nephews talk excitedly about their many activities, which naturally involve lots of sports, from football and water polo to soccer and equestrian.<\/p>\n
The problem isn\u2019t that the NBA is scheduling games on Christmas. The problem is that it\u2019s all day and all night on Christmas, and asking viewers to come along for the ride. In that spirit, then, there\u2019s really no Christmas spirit at all. It\u2019s using the day as strictly a marketing platform, as ore to be mined. You know who agrees with this viewpoint? LeBron James, that\u2019s who. King James will be playing in his 20th Christmas game on Thursday, and he is OK with that. But Daddy James is tired of it. \u201cI\u2019d much rather be home with my family,\u201d LeBron told a group of reporters earlier this week.<\/p>\n
LeBron went on to say, \u201cBut I mean, it\u2019s the game. It\u2019s the game I love. It\u2019s a game I watched when I was a kid on Christmas Day, watching a lot of the greatest play the game on Christmas, it\u2019s always been an honor to play it. Obviously, I\u2019m gonna be completely honest, I would like to be home on the couch with my family all throughout the day. But my number is called, our number is called, we have to go out and perform, and I look forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
LeBron James on playing his NBA-record 20th Christmas Day game this week:<\/p>\n
\u201cI’d much rather be at home with my family. But I mean, it’s the game, it’s the game that I love. It’s a game I watched when I was a kid on Christmas Day, watching a lot of the greatest play the game on\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/lo85glVwPk<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) December 22, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n To be fair, Christmas is a tradition in the NBA. As far back as 1947, the Basketball Association of America (which would soon merge with the National Basketball League to form the NBA) played three games on Christmas. Not only did the world not come to an end, but the world, at least parts of the world where the games were played, got a kick out of it. At Madison Square Garden III, a league-high crowd of 15,427 turned out to see Colgate smoothie Carl Braun (as Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News called him) and Seton Hall\u2019s Tommy Byrnes combine for 39 points to lead the Knicks to an 89-75 victory over the Providence Steamrollers.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, at the Baltimore Coliseum, the hometown Bullets coasted to an 87-70 victory over the Chicago Stags. How festive was the atmosphere? \u201cSanta Claus was kind to basketball referees,\u201d wrote The Baltimore Sun\u2019s Jesse A. Linthicum in his \u201cSunlight on Sports\u201d column. \u201cHe brought them new whistles and how those babies tooted last night at the Coliseum! They made more noise than an entire neighborhood of kids with drums, horns, whistles and cowbells.\u201d<\/p>\n In the third Christmas game from 1947, the Washington Capitols registered a 73-56 victory over the St. Louis Bombers at St. Louis Arena. Just 3,671 fans turned out for that one.<\/p>\n If the NBA wants to claim territorial\/traditional Christmas rights, fine. And the Knicks will be playing their 58th Christmas game. It\u2019s awesome to consider that there are likely plenty of kids who\u2019ll be at MSG with parents who went to Knicks games on Christmas with their parents. Congrats to those who\u2019ve made that a family tradition.<\/p>\n But if you\u2019re a diehard Knicks fan whose Christmas time with the family involves a trip to MSG, it probably means you weren\u2019t sitting around all day watching the other games. As for those three Christmas games in 1947, they weren\u2019t televised back-to-back-to-back on national television, with the whiz kids from the Basketball Association of America getting inside your head and encouraging you to watch \u2019em all. (If you lived in Washington, D.C., in 1947 and were one of the few people lucky enough to own a television set, \u201cMiracle on Main Street<\/a>\u201d was showing on WMAL-TV on Christmas night.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just the NBA that\u2019s taking bigger bites out of Christmas. The NFL has played games on Christmas Day and even Christmas Eve. If the NFL could get away with it, the Philadelphia Eagles would be the home team in an annual Christmas Day game played in Bethlehem. As in the Bethlehem just south of Jerusalem, not the one in Lehigh Valley about 70 miles north of Philly.<\/p>\n A full day of football on Christmas \ud83c\udf84 pic.twitter.com\/sYHGjxpE5D<\/a><\/p>\n