The National Basketball Association and Christmas have been synonymous since the league's second season, dating all the way back to 1947.
But a lot has changed since the New York Knicks shellacked the Providence Steamrollers 89–75 at Madison Square Garden. (Beyond the fact that the Knicks, who have played more games on Christmas Day than any other team, did not play this year, and the Steamrollers ceased to exist in 1949.)
In a normal year, the league's marquee matchup day falls somewhere in the second month of the season – fans and pundits alike can typically get a sense of what their teams are made of; this year, because of a shortened season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for the teams playing on Christmas, it was their second game of the season.
But that didn't stop the NBA from putting on a spectacle worthy of Christmases past. Here are some takeaways from the five Yuletide games that dazzled fans all day:
Miami Heat coach Erik Spolestra has never lost on Christmas – and not even 2020 could break that streak as the New Orleans Pelicans took their talents to South Beach and left with coal in their stockings.
"Just shows you that we’ve had some really good teams here and teams that have had the opportunity to play on Christmas," Spolestra said.
The dominant 111-98 win, which tipped off the NBA's day of play, came even without Heat superstar Jimmy Butler playing for an entire half.
The Heat were red-hot from beyond the 3-point arc, led by 3rd-year player Duncan Robinson, who made history, tying the record for most 3's in a single game on Christmas Day.
“It’s super special to play in Christmas,” Robinson said, who ended the night with 23 points. “I certainly don’t take it for granted.”
“The guy is a great, great shooter. He’s going to have nights like that,” Pelicans coach Stan Van Gundy said. “But at least three of them were ones where we could have done a better job.”
Pelicans star Zion Williamson notched 32 points and 14 rebounds in 38, career highs in both boards and minutes played.
When most fans think of a historically lopsided scoring game, they likely wouldn't think that former back-to-back NBA MVP Steph Curry would be on the losing side of that effort – but that's exactly what happened when the Warriors visited Milwaukee on Christmas Day.
The Bucks handed the Warriors their second straight loss (Brooklyn routed Golden State 125-99 in the season-opening game on Dec. 22) on Friday, 138-99, Milwaukee's first Christmas Day home game in the franchise's 52-year history.
It was also the second-most lopsided score of any Christmas Day game in the league's history, though the 39-point defecit comes nowhere near the 62-point thrashing that the Syracuse Nationals gifted the New York Knicks in 1960.
“The thing I was most disappointed in is we just had two good days of practice with our execution working on getting in our offense and making hard cuts and reads, and we did not execute much of anything,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said. “It was kind of scattered and disorganized. I’m disappointed in that. I’ve got to take the blame for that. I’m the head coach.”
The current reigning back-to-back MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo, had 15 points and 13 rebounds, but had a poor shooting day: 4-of-15 from the floor and 7-of-15 from the free-throw line.
But Antetokounmpo's co-star, Khris Middleton, put on a shooting clinic: 10-of-15, with 6-for-8 from 3-point range.
“The weeks before the season, I just tried to put in good work, work on my game,” said Middleton, who has 58 points through his first two games of the season. “So far, it’s been working for me.”
Last season, the Bucks were cruising to a historic regular-season record before the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the season; the team hopes to improve on their result from last season, when they were elimiated in the Eastern Conference Finals by the Miami Heat. But their dominance in the East will be challenged by at least one of the teams that played in the game that followed on Christmas.
The new-look Brooklyn Nets got their long-suffering fans quite the gift on Christmas: A drubbing of one of their biggest conference rivals, the Boston Celtics.
When the Nets visited Boston last week for a preseason game, Brooklyn superstar Kyrie Irving saged his former team's court before tipoff.
Whatever he did appears to have worked: Irving went off for a dominant 37 point performance, with 8 assists, shooting 7-for-10 in his first return to Boston's TD Garden since he left the Celtics to sign with Brooklyn in free agency.
“We just settled in, let the game come to us, and we just felt back,” Irving said after the game. “It was just about matching their physicality and doing what it took to get the dub.”
Irving set the franchise's record for most points on Christmas Day.
Irving's running mate, Kevin Durant, returning from an Achilles injury that sidelined him all of last season, poured in 29 points, including 16 points in the third quarter, when the Nets turned a three-point halftime deficit into an 86-77 lead. Center Jarrett Allen added 11 rebounds for the Nets in a near-double-double performance.
Boston's Jaylen Brown scored 27 points, and Jayson Tatum added 20, but they could not replicate their win over Milwaukee in their season opener Wednesday.
The Nets, meanwhile, became the first team since the 2008-09 Lakers to win their first two games of the season by over 20 points. The Lakers went on to win the championship that year after a 65-17 season.
The ill-fated Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce swap, which sent Brooklyn's draft picks to Boston for nearly half of a decade, appears to be long in the rearview mirror. But to get their shot at championship glory, Durant and Co. will have to go through a certain former teammate of Irving's, who shows no signs of slowing down in his 18th NBA season.
The Los Angeles Lakers could be even better this season than they were last season.
And last season they won the NBA Championship.
In their second game of the season, MVP-favorite Luka Doncic didn’t stand a chance of keeping up, even with a solid 27 points and 7 assists.
In his eye-popping 18th NBA season, LeBron James continues to make history – his 22 points made him the second-leading Yuletide scorer in NBA history as the Lakers routed the Mavericks 138-115 in the penultimate game of Christmas Day.
But LeBron wasn't even the leading scorer on the team. He tied for second-most, with one of the newest members of the Lakers, Montrezl Harrell, who scored 17 of his 22 points in the second half. Anthony Davis led all scorers with 28 points.
“We have the ability to where we can have four, maybe even five guys that can score in the 20s any given night,” James said. “As long as we defend and we’re efficient, it’s a beautiful thing to see.”
“The more we play with each other, the more we’re going to figure things out,” Davis added. “We prided ourselves on not losing two in a row last year, so we wanted to come out and make sure we do that.”
A remach of last year's Western Conference semifinals turned out to be the slugfest that pundits and fans predicted, though not in the way anyone likely expected.
Clippers superstar Kawhi Leonard had 21 points before catching an elbow to the face – from his own teammate.
Serge Ibaka went up for a rebound and caught the side of his teammate’s face with his right elbow. Leonard lay bleeding on the court before walking to the locker room.
“He got up and walked off the floor, so he’s going to be good,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said.
But the Clippers didn’t need Leonard to close out the Nuggets; Paul George scored 23 points and had nine assists, and Los Angeles beat Denver 121-108 in the Christmas closer.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.