'Twas the Night Before NBA Christmas | HOOPS Daily, 12/24/2024
Joel Embiid gets ejected, Celtics & Jayson Tatum gives fantasy players a lump of coal, an NBA Christmas Day preview, and more.
The Tip-Off: 3 of the Best My Favorite NBA Christmas Shoes
Game Recaps
Joel Embiid ejected for second time in career
The 76ers and the Spurs faced off in what was a highly anticipated matchup between Joel Embiid and Victor Wembanyama. But it quickly turned into one of the weirdest games in recent memory. 76ers’ backup big Andre Drummond was ejected for an altercation with Wemby but after a few minutes of review, the techs were rescinded and Drummond was allowed to return to the game. We even got the shot of him walking back down the tunnel with security like he was Bill Goldberg.
If that wasn’t weird enough, a few minutes later Joel Embiid had his own altercation with Wemby and after arguing with the ref1 he was headed to the showers early.
Then, that same ref approached 76ers’ coach Nick Nurse to say she’d messed up.
Ultimately, Philly got the win but if you weren’t watching this all unfold in real time you definitely missed out.
Magic Beat Celtics, Tatum a Late, Late Scratch
The Orlando Magic and the Boston Celtics had a great game Monday night that went down to the wire before Orlando could finally pull out the W.
Unfortunately for fantasy basketball players though, they had to watch Boston lose without Jayson Tatum in the lineup. Tatum was a late scratch, so late in fact that lineups had already locked so managers couldn’t swap in another player. This whole thing was a bummer with a late injury report, a removal from the starting line up while maintaining a questionable status, and then finally at halftime, Boston finally declared Tatum out with illness.
The off-court drama wasn’t enough to overshadow what happened on court though as we have a new NBA rivalry for the ages: Kristaps Porzingis and Goga Bitazde.
The best part of all of this is after everything was reviewed and Goga didn’t realize he was the one being ejected so he waved goodbye to Porzingis and we all got to watch him realize it was actually him:
What shouldn’t be lost in all this though is Orlando pulling out another huge win against a quality opponent despite the myriad injuries they’re battling. Tonight it was rookie Tristan da Silva who sealed the victory with a huge corner three.
Pistons Knock-Off Lakers Despite LeBron Triple Double
Since coming back from his mysterious team absence, LeBron James has been incredible. Unfortunately tonight, he was unable to tie it up in the closing seconds vs. the Pistons. LeBron led the way for LA with 28pts/11a/11r but Detroit’s balanced offense was too much for the team to overcome, specifically with their bench being outscored 52-28 including former Laker Malik Beasley who hit five threes against his old team.2
Surprising .500 Teams
As it stands, the Timberwolves, Suns, Hakws, and Pacers all sit at .500. While three of these four teams3 are currently in the play-in, it’s still surprising to see them all at .500 given how good so many people expected them all to be. Obviously we aren’t even halfway through the season yet but they’re going to need to get it in gear if they want to avoid a play-in route to the playoffs. Specifically the Timberwolves who went from #1 seed last year and looking like they were a rising powerhouse to now sitting 10th, barely holding off Phoenix for the last play-in opportunity.
NBA Christmas Day Preview
Christmas Day is a special one in the NBA. We’ve got five premiere matchups on deck:
Spurs at Knicks
Timberwolves at Mavericks
76ers at Celtics
Lakers at Warriors
Nuggets at Suns
There are two teams that stand out to me as missing from this lineup: the NBA Cup finalist OKC Thunder and NBA Cup champion Milwaukee Bucks. Christmas Day is a huge showcase for the NBA, it’s the time for a lot of more casual fans to begin to follow the season more seriously. It’s a great day for a league so publicly desperate for ratings to feature Giannis Antetokounmpo4 and Damian Lillard, or for a league so worried about ratings to showcase one of the best young, fun teams in the league with the Thunder.
We don’t get a Christmas game. Why? Because we got a small market? Maybe that’s the case.
- Giannis Antetokounmpo when asked about the Bucks not having a Christmas Day game.
Giannis has a good point too, for a league that seems to complain a lot about stars, the seem to be doing pretty good if they can leave off SGA, Giannis, Dame, James Harden, and young teams like the Rockets who are packed to the brim with highly watchable players. To be clear, none of this matters to me, I will be awake at 9am for that first tip-off like I’ve been every year since I was like 13. But if 1-2 of these games are one-sided blowouts, leaving off some of the best teams this season will likely be mentioned.
Dunk the Halls: Spurs at Knicks
Christmas hoops in the Garden are always special but this year ABC is doing a little more with an alternate, Disney broadcast called Dunk the Halls:
This will be similar to the Marvel broadcast from a few years ago and the NFL’s recent Simpsons broadcast and feature Disney characters like Mickey, Minnie, and many more alongside animated versions of the players. Imagine animated KAT popping his jersey and screaming “New York F***ng City! Probably won’t happen but it’d be incredible. I know I’ll watch at least part of this just out of curiosity but I’m not the main demographic by any means. Still, these tend to be pretty well done so I’d imagine it’s going to be super entertaining for the right audiences.
Missing in Action: Where is My Christmas Jersey?!
Longtime NBA fans know how special Christmas Day is but if you’re new to the league, you may be unfamiliar with what was once the best part of the day: the special Christmas Day jerseys that teams would get.
I have two Lakers Christmas jerseys hanging in my closet still right now. Those things are like a time capsule on coat hangers. They had the full collection with jerseys, shorts, socks, and then the special edition shoe packs that would drop. I mentioned the shoes a bit in the intro but it was always awesome to see how they would tie everything into the day. It sounds corny now but it really made it feel like a bigger deal that those teams were playing on Christmas. Now we’ve got every team with five new jerseys every year but they don’t have nearly the same level of thought or heart put into them as these used to. I know it’s probably not economical to produce jerseys that will only be worn once but just once, the NBA should decide to do something because it feels right.
Watching Tonight
There’s no NBA games tonight so take some time to get in the holiday spirit:
The Night Before - an R-rated Christmas comedy with Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Anthony Mackie
8-Bit Christmas - a throwback Christmas movie that actually manages to capture the nostalgic vibes of movies like A Christmas Story
Just Friends - Ryan Reynolds heads back to his small hometown for Christmas and hijinks ensue as he tries to win his old friend’s love
Thank you to everyone for following along so far this season, it’s been so much fun getting to write these and seeing people all around check them out. For the next week or so there’ll be no newsletters but I’ll hop on a few times with different little one-offs and updates in the meantime. Please as always feel free to reach out in the comments or by clicking here if you have questions/thoughts/ideas of things you’d wanna see. I hope everyone has a nice Christmas Eve, a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Happy Kwanzaa, and anything else you’re celebrating this holiday season. Take care, I’ll talk to you soon.
The same one who ejected Drummond a few minutes earlier.
Because of course he did. Role players leave LA and immediately remember how to shoot again.
Phoenix is the odd man out right now.
Giannis was asked about not being featured and this is what he had to say.