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Predicting the NBA’s 2026 Christmas Day lineup
Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Now that LeBron James has decided to join the Philadelphia 76ers, Adam Silver and the NBA league office can finally get started on putting together their national television schedule for the 2026-2027 regular season.
And as always, the NBA’s annual Christmas Day showcase tops the list of the most important dates on the calendar.
Yes, the NFL has claimed what has been a decades-long tradition as its own turf in recent years, a significant blow to the NBA. However, the league’s Christmas Day ratings held their own with relatively large audiences, especially the games that didn’t go up against the NFL head-to-head. Now that the NFL has a Christmas Day triple-header this season, unfortunately the NBA will face competition all day long for their five-game stretch.
There are some great possibilities for the NBA’s quintuple-header for Christmas Day 2026, so here are our picks for the best possible matchups.
12 p.m. ET – Detroit Pistons vs. Cleveland Cavaliers
The Central Division rivals met in last year’s postseason when the Cavaliers upset the Pistons, who had finished the regular season as the top seed in the Eastern Conference. The NBA and ESPN have a lot of possibilities to play with when it comes to teams who could and should be focused on Christmas Day. But it feels like the East’s top seed and last year’s conference finalists should find a way to get a showcase matchup. And it’s a deserving reward for the Pistons, who last played on Christmas Day all the way back in 2005.
2:30 p.m. ET – Boston Celtics vs. Miami Heat
These two teams should be Eastern Conference contenders and have a great history of playoff rivalries to play off of. While Boston traded away Jaylen Brown and Miami failed to land LeBron James, there’s still plenty of star power available here with a healthy Jayson Tatum and Giannis Antetokounmpo in his first season in Miami. We don’t know how exactly these new-look teams will fare in the 2026-2027 season, but they present big stars, markets, and brands that will be heavily featured throughout the campaign.
5 p.m. ET – New York Knicks vs. Philadelphia 76ers
The defending NBA champions against LeBron James and his new team in a quest to win one final ring? It’s the obvious choice when it comes to the one matchup that fans would want to see. Yes, you could pair LeBron with any number of possible choices, including his former stops in Cleveland, Miami, or Los Angeles. But the juice that comes from the league’s biggest draw as a player (James) against its biggest draw as a team (Knicks) is too good an opportunity to pass up. The Knicks broke all kinds of modern-day NBA ratings records on the way to their first title in over 50 years, and the league should give them the best possible Christmas Day matchup to maximize viewership against the NFL. Add in the fact that Knicks-Sixers is also the most historically frequent Christmas Day game at 13 contests between the pair, and this should be a lock.
8 p.m. ET – Oklahoma City Thunder vs. San Antonio Spurs
If a Knicks-Sixers matchup is 1A for the NBA on Christmas Day lineup, then this has to be 1B. The epic seven-game Western Conference Finals series between these two powerhouse teams was some of the best basketball that the NBA has seen in years. And viewers responded to Victor Wembanyama potentially becoming the new face of the league going up against his arch-rivals and 2025 NBA champions in Oklahoma City. Forget 2026, this should be a Christmas Day showcase for multiple years to come.
10:30 p.m. ET – Los Angeles Lakers vs Golden State Warriors
There are plenty of teams in the Western Conference who deserve a Christmas Day game. The Rockets, Mavericks, Timberwolves, and Nuggets were all featured in last year’s slate. But when it comes to who the NBA will select to play on Christmas for the nightcap, look no further than the Los Angeles Lakers and Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors. The two teams have featured on 12 of the last 13 Christmas Days, and that streak should continue in 2026.
The post Predicting the NBA’s 2026 Christmas Day lineup appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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