Prominent voices in the NBA continue to weigh in on the NFL’s decision to host Christmas Day games despite the holiday falling on a Wednesday this year.
After LeBron James spoke up against the NFL’s decision to air Kansas City Cheifs-Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens-Houston Texans on Christmas Day, his friend and fellow member of the most famous banana boat in NBA history, Carmelo Anthony, echoed the Los Angeles Lakers star’s sentiment.
“NFL, you know yall wrong for that, you know its our day?” Anthony said on his podcast, ‘7pm in Brooklyn.’ “They should work in tandem. NBA, NFL, we all on the same day. Lets not overlap, if you want to really make this work. But the NFL is saying —- that.”
Christmas Day usually offers the first NBA games of the year with any sort of aura, giving the league a chance to showcase its stars free from the competition of the NFL.
Anthony and the New York Knicks took on Kobe Bryant and the Lakers in a 2012 Christmas Day classic. The Knicks star scored 34 points, but it wasn’t enough; Bryant’s 34 proved more decisive in Los Angeles’s 100-94 win.
This year, James and the Lakers took on Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors during ESPN’s 8 pm primetime game slot.
While the streaming numbers aren’t live yet, the ratings for that game are more than likely to be dwarfed by whatever figure the concurrent Ravens-Texans game (featuring a Beyonce halftime) will produce.
“Merry Christmas to my family back home, I’m coming home,” James said postgame following his team’s narrow 115-113 win. “And I love the NFL. I love the NFL. But Christmas is our day,”
James scored 31 points and added 10 assists as Los Angeles improved to 17-13. His counterpart Curry netted 38 of his own, but it wasn’t enough to stop Golden State from tumbling to a 15-14 record.
The NFL would occasionally feature Christmas Day games until 2019, only playing if the proper days of the week lined up. At one point, the league avoided contests on the 25th entirely.
However, the league decided to play annually on the holiday starting in 2020 (likely in an attempt to salvage ratings in a down-COVID-19 season). The tradition will most certainly continue going forward, regardless of the day of the week.
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