2022 NBA Christmas Day Schedule: Did The League Get It Right?
On Wednesday afternoon, the NBA released its full schedule for the 2022-23 season, including key dates and matchups throughout the year.
Among these key dates, the league officially announced the 2022 Christmas Day slate, which had been reported on prior to the league’s announcement.
Five games will be played on Christmas Day this upcoming season and in these five games spanning from midday all the way to late at night, eight playoff teams from the 2021-22 season will be in action and of the ten teams playing, seven of them won a playoff series a season ago.
Of course everyone wants to see the defending champion Golden State Warriors led by Stephen Curry and the same could be said for LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, even though they are coming off a season in which they missed the playoffs!
The league will also be featuring some of the younger superstars in the game today with Jayson Tatum (Boston Celtics), Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks), Luka Doncic (Dallas Mavericks) and Nikola Jokic (Denver Nuggets).
All five of this year’s Christmas Day games should be entertaining to watch, but every time this schedule is released, we always have to ask the question of:
“Did the NBA get this right?”
Let’s start with the positives of this five-game schedule, as nobody can really make an argument against the Memphis Grizzlies taking on the Golden State Warriors, a rematch of their Western Conference Semifinals series from this last year.
These two teams have very suddenly grown to dislike one another, making for some very intriguing 48 minutes of play anytime they step on the court together!
Not to mention, players from both teams have been firing at one another on social media ever since the regular season, so it seemed inevitable that the Grizzlies and Warriors would see each other in the prime-time slot on Christmas night.
It also makes sense for the league to schedule the Milwaukee Bucks taking on the defending Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics.
Boston ended up defeating Milwaukee in a seven game Eastern Conference Semifinals series this past year and these are the past two Eastern Conference teams to have advanced to the NBA Finals.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is arguably the best player in the world right now and on the other side of things, Jayson Tatum has begun to emerge as one of the better scorers in the entire league. A top-tier offensive team in the Bucks versus a top-tier defensive team in the Celtics should be a fantastic matchup and quite possibly a preview of the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals.
Looking at the final game on the Christmas Day schedule, the Phoenix Suns and Denver Nuggets are two of the better teams in the league, but to have them play one another on the biggest day on the league schedule is kind of a let down.
These two teams are not rivals with one another and they have faced each other just once in the postseason since 1989. While the Nuggets and Suns should definitely be a part of this five-game schedule, they should be matched up with different teams.
I mean, just look at one of the earlier games in the Los Angeles Lakers visiting the Dallas Mavericks.
Los Angeles has long been a rival of Denver dating back to their clashes in the playoffs from 2008-2012 and putting LeBron James, a four-time MVP, up against Nikola Jokic, the league’s reigning back-to-back MVP, makes for an even better game.
As for the Dallas Mavericks, they recently defeated the Phoenix Suns in Game 7 of their Western Conference Semifinals series, embarrassing the Suns by 60 total points in their last two playoff games.
This has suddenly turned into a rivalry amongst the fans and on the court, both teams vented their frustrations with one another through their physicality and on-the-court shoving during the playoffs.
Everyone wants to see Luka Doncic and the Mavericks take on Devin Booker and the Suns again, which is why the NBA missed a prime opportunity to have these two teams face off in Phoenix against one another to close out the night.
I guess that leaves us with just one game, which happens to be the first game of the day set to tip-off at 12:00 p.m. ET. on Christmas Day.
Most people outside of the tri-state area will probably tune into the NFL action shortly after this game begins and that is because the New York Knicks will play host to the Philadelphia 76ers.
The 76ers are a great team and quite honestly, they will have a chance to win the Eastern Conference this upcoming year if they can stay healthy, but the same cannot be said for the New York Knicks, who are still nothing more than a team who could potentially sneak into the playoffs if everything goes their way.
Philadelphia and New York are rivals in virtually every single sport and they are two of the more historic franchises in NBA history, but there really is not much to be excited about in this matchup.
The Miami Heat kicked the Philadelphia 76ers out of the playoffs last season, they were the 1-seed in the Eastern Conference last year and Jimmy Butler played with the Sixers earlier in his career, which could have made a clash between the Heat and 76ers an intriguing first game on Christmas Day.
Maybe even Trae Young and the Atlanta Hawks who knocked Philadelphia out of the playoffs in 2021 to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals could have been a better foe.
Or better yet, even though they are dealing with a ton of drama right now, the Brooklyn Nets would have made the perfect opponent for the Philadelphia 76ers on Christmas Day simply because these two teams hate one another, their fan bases hate one another and after joining the Nets in 2021, James Harden requested a trade from Brooklyn last season and was dealt to the 76ers midseason, aiding in the internal collapse of the Nets.
Who knows, maybe the New York Knicks will be the surprise story of the 2022-23 NBA season, but having them host the first Christmas Day game for this upcoming year is a little bit of a letdown from a fan’s perspective.
Overall though, the NBA did a pretty good job in assembling this year’s five-game schedule for December 25.
