Fixing the NBA Christmas Day schedule: Five matchups we’d like to see at this point in the 2024-25 season

NBA Christmas Day is supposed to feature the marquee slate of games on the league’s regular-season schedule. The five happening on Wednesday — Knicks-Spurs, Mavericks-Wolves, Celtics-76ers, Warriors-Lakers and Suns-Nuggets — are star-studded games. But let’s take a look at who isn’t playing on Christmas this year:

• The 26-4 Cleveland Cavaliers, holders of the best record in the NBA and the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
• The 23-5 Oklahoma City Thunder, holders of the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference.
• The 20-9 Houston Rockets, holders of the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference.
• The 20-10 Memphis Grizzlies, holders of the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference.
• The 16-12 Milwaukee Bucks, our 2024 NBA Cup champions.

Some of these snubs are more excusable than others. None of us knew that Houston would be this good, for instance. But the Christmas schedule has long emphasized markets over quality. Remember all of those tanking Knicks teams that opened the Christmas slate with losses to superior Eastern Conference foes? Meanwhile, many of the NBA’s best and brightest get left at home for playing in the wrong city. Giannis Antetokounmpo wasn’t happy about his omission this season.

“I’m a little bit upset or kind of questioning it,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic’s Eric Nehm. “But I really believe there’s probably an algorithm that takes place within the NBA that shows who is the most attractive team or which team gets the most attention for them to be able to play in the Christmas game.”

Maybe there is an algorithm. More likely, the NBA is working with limited data. It would be impossible for the league to know how exciting each team will be by the end of December, or how healthy they will be for that matter. Only four of the 10 teams playing on Wednesday currently have top-six seeds in their respective conferences.

We, fortunately, aren’t operating under a four-month time horizon. Christmas is here. So let’s pretend we could hand-pick the Christmas schedule based on what we know today. There will be no consideration given to market-size or ratings, we’re just picking the best games we can. Here are the five we’d choose.

Cleveland Cavaliers at New York Knicks

Aside from market, there is a reason almost every NBA Christmas starts in New York. There’s not a better venue for a big game than Madison Square Garden, so there was no question that we’d be using it to set the stage for a killer day of basketball. Meeting the Eastern Conference’s No. 3 seed for our opening act will be the Cavaliers, the NBA’s best team thus far this season and one that brings plenty of narrative intrigue to the Garden.

Obviously, Donovan Mitchell was linked to New York through trade rumors for years. Those rumors have now been buried. The lingering beef between these teams from the 2023 playoffs, however, has not. The Knicks overwhelmed the favored Cavs, leading Jarrett Allen to say “the lights were brighter than expected.” There are no brighter lights in basketball than Madison Square Garden, and if Cleveland is going to realize its championship dreams, winning there may be a prerequisite to winning it all. While Cleveland holds the No. 1 seed in the East, the general consensus is that the East still runs through Boston. So let’s stoke the flames of a rivalry for the position of “biggest threat to the Celtics in the East” with a marquee Christmas game.

Houston Rockets at Dallas Mavericks

Every Christmas needs a grinch, so might I suggest we throw Dillon Brooks in the mix as the day’s villain? Some teams don’t like playing on Christmas, justifiably preferring to spend the day celebrating with family. The Rockets will play anywhere, any time, and they’ll make your life miserable as they’re doing it. Nobody is making life miserable for the Mavericks lately. They’ve won eight of their last 10 and Luka Doncic is rounding into MVP form.

Sure, there’s the obvious appeal of pitting the West’s No. 2 seed against its No. 4 seed, but really, this game is bigger than that. Back in the heyday of Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan and Tracy McGrady, the Texas triangle was the NBA’s most competitive region. Legitimate rivalries formed among all three teams that extended into the postseason. The Spurs aren’t quite ready for that yet, but the Rockets and Mavericks are here to win now, and we should be encouraging the next generation of in-state hatred. Letting Brooks try to steal Doncic’s Christmas seems like a solid step in that direction.

Oklahoma City Thunder at Boston Celtics

The matchup that needs no introduction. In a perfect world, Christmas should feature one of two things: a Finals rematch or a Finals preview. With Dallas otherwise occupied fighting a bare-knuckle brawl against the Rockets, we turn to the prohibitive Western Conference favorite as an opponent for the defending champion Celtics.

This is the ultimate “styles make fights” matchups. The Thunder have the lowest defensive rating any NBA team has posted since the COVID-19 pandemic and have a real chance to break the record for most steals in league history. The Celtics posted the best offensive rating in NBA history last season and are currently on track to become the first team ever to shoot more 3s than 2s over a full season. If all goes as planned, these teams will see each other in June. There’s no better time to whet our appetites than Christmas.

Milwaukee Bucks at Denver Nuggets

If the two best teams are going to play on Christmas, the two best players should as well. Nikola Jokic has held the mostly unanimous title of “best player in basketball” ever since he won the 2023 championship, but Giannis Antetokounmpo, a former belt-holder in his own right, has been coming for him this season with a new career-high in scoring and an NBA Cup MVP award now on his mantle.

Speaking of MVPs, that’s what this game would really be about. Sure, Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jayson Tatum are still in the running, but Jokic and Antetokounmpo have been the two best players in the league so far this season, and letting them duke it out for unofficial MVP favorite status sounds like the perfect follow-up to our anticipated Finals preview. 

Memphis Grizzlies at Golden State Warriors

Dillon Brooks may be gone, but the spirit of his rivalry with the Warriors is alive and well. Draymond Green still talks quite a bit of trash to the Grizzlies, and as the cherry on top, these teams played last week and the Grizzlies won by a billion. Well, maybe not quite that many, but Green still had a historic zero-point, zero-rebound, zero-assist performance in a 51-point defeat that he’ll no doubt want to avenge. I don’t know what exactly that means in the context of Green’s history, but at the very least, this game would be dramatic.

This game has plenty more to offer than just Draymond’s antics. It pits the NBA’s most exciting scorer inside of the arc, Ja Morant, against its most exciting scorer outside of the arc, Stephen Curry. No matter how much the Warriors are struggling at any given time, Curry is automatically one of the 10 most entertaining watches in basketball, and would therefore be extremely difficult to leave off of any Christmas schedule. The young Grizzlies haven’t quite earned that credit, but this is an ascending Western Conference contender that has remade the bulk of its supporting cast since the last time casual fans were watching them consistently. Christmas is the perfect opportunity to reintroduce them to the basketball world.