The 2024 Paris Olympics are over, which means the portion of the NBA offseason that includes actual basketball is over, too. It will be a little less than two months before competitive games resume. Fortunately, the NBA knows this and has already whet our appetites by announcing the 2024-25 regular season schedule on Thursday.
The league’s 2024 Christmas Day slate is a doozy. As always, the league’s marquee holiday features five of the most anticipated games on the schedule. Here are the games:
This slate includes last season’s champion (the Celtics), three of last season’s four finalists and eight of the 10 teams with the best current championship odds. The reigning MVP (Nikola Jokic), Defensive Player of the Year (Rudy Gobert), Most Improved Player (Tyrese Maxey) and Rookie of the Year (Victor Wembanyama) will all be playing. So with that in mind… which of these games should we most excited for? Let’s rank them.
5. Los Angeles Lakers at Golden State Warriors
It says quite a bit about a slate when a matchup between the two best players of an era, who faced off in the NBA Finals four times, are playing in its worst game. LeBron James vs. Stephen Curry is always delightful, and the last few years have produced several incredible regular-season matchups. But James and Curry are both playing for mediocre teams. This is the only game on the Christmas schedule to feature two teams that are not realistically in the championship picture. The Lakers and Warriors are like the eighth- and ninth-best teams in the field here, trailing only the Spurs. If this game had some sort of separate emotional resonance, like perhaps Klay Thompson returning to the Bay Area in a Lakers uniform, that might have pushed it up the list. But Thompson is a Maverick, and the Lakers and Warriors are Play-In-caliber teams. Factor in the possibility of injuries with all of the best players in this game in their 30s and it’s just impossible to justify ranking it any higher.
4. San Antonio Spurs at New York Knicks
The last time Victor Wembanyama faced the Knicks, he…
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