The National Basketball Association gifts sports fans a showcase of holiday competition superior to the drowsy slate of Thanksgiving games served by the NFL almost every year. Turkey day football, with the league’s comparatively dominant popularity, is celebrated annually as the premier family viewing event, judged by cultural prevalence and television ratings. But Christmas day hoops, which features the NBA’s signature teams and players working on normal rest, is an occasion for the millions of professional basketball skeptics convinced “nobody plays defense” to watch little-known athletes like Avery Bradley, the Boston Celtics shooting guard, stifle elite competition.
On Thursday night in Indianapolis, Bradley, the undersized six-year veteran out of Texas, helped limit Indiana Pacers star Paul George, seven inches taller and 40 pounds heavier, to just five made field goals out of 16 tries. Bradley is quick, tenacious, anticipatory, and exactly the type of guy who is overlooked in a glamour league full of offensive talent. Bradley will be facing one such player, three-time Olympic gold medalist and all-world scorer Carmelo Anthony, at noon on Sunday, when the New York Knicks welcome Boston to the Big Apple.
Here’s your viewing guide to that match-up and the four that follow (all times eastern).
Boston Celtics @ New York Knicks, 12:00 PM
The Knicks are The Expendables: a group of aging action stars assembled with the effect of selling tickets and receiving a poor critical reception. They feature Anthony (a 13-year veteran) and additions Joakim Noah (nine years), son of pop star and tennis champion Yannick, and Derrick Rose (seven years), disfavored son of the goddess Fortuna, who wrecked his knees multiple times before departing the Chicago Bulls this off-season. All three players are former All-NBA Team members, and Rose was the league’s most valuable player in 2011. But the franchise’s new hope is Latvian import Kristaps Porzingas, who is seven feet, three inches tall, yet has the touch of a sharp-shooter a foot shorter. Upon being drafted fourth overall in 2015, Porzingas inspired an exasperated and foul-mouthed Knicks fan to question “Who the f— is Tingas Pingas?” His name is better known now.
This older and improved crew from last season will host a Celtics team that is finally getting healthy. Its best nights feature mix-and-match player rotations that often roll 10 men or more deep—extensive for NBA standards—presenting challenges to each individual opponent. Boston’s point guard, Isaiah Thomas (not that one), is a short speedster putting up career numbers of 27 points and six assists per night. His defensive limitations are frequently offset by the aforementioned Bradley and fellow guard Marcus Smart, an Oklahoma State product built like an NFL tight end. The Cs have youth and a great head coach—Brad Stevens, who helped take Butler University from a good but obscure Midwest basketball school to a national power—and they’re probably a touch better than the Knicks. Both should be playoff teams.
Golden State Warriors @ Cleveland Cavaliers, 2:30 PM
As much as the Cavs deserved to defeat the Warriors for last year’s NBA championship, it was the biggest upset in the Finals series history. They were a 50-something win team—there are 82 games in the regular season—down three victories to one in a best-of-seven set against the juggernaut that achieved the league record for W’s in a single year, 73. Golden State, led by MVP guard and real-life video game character Stephen Curry, had three opportunities, two of them on their home floor in Oakland, to make their case as the best single-season squad in the history of pro ball. But Cleveland’s LeBron James, who may have climbed the all-time list of greats to number two by now (behind only Michael Jordan), wouldn’t give in. James averaged an obnoxious 30 points, 11 rebounds, nine assists, three steals, and two blocks over the seven games, and received plenty of scoring help from All-Star guard Kyrie Irving, who hit the championship-winning shot, en route to a four-to-three series win. The decisive contest was the most-viewed NBA tilt in nearly 20 years, with 31 million sets of eyes. It may have signaled the renaissance of the sport, a rebound from the popular, Jordan-led 1990s.
Or it may have been as it good as it’ll get. The Warriors could somehow be more overwhelming than they were last year, now that they feature former MVP Kevin Durant, a one-man offensive powerhouse and high-end defender in his prime. Golden State is a super-team, drubbing opponents by an average of nearly 14 points a night. The Cavaliers, who retained their core assets from last year, remain best-positioned to stop them this spring—barring a western challenger, like some old hands from Texas called the San Antonio Spurs, getting to them first.
Chicago Bulls @ San Antonio Spurs, 5:00 PM
Though the Spurs lost surefire Hall-of-Fame forward and top-10 all-timer Tim Duncan to retirement this summer, he was a role player and model by the time he reached the end of his career. His de facto replacement, All-Star LaMarcus Aldridge, was already with the team. And Kawhi Leonard, a mid-first round pick a few years ago, has evolved into one of the NBA’s five-best players and arguably its best defender. Most successful sports franchises, even the dominant ones, inevitably dip because of age, cost, or misfortune, especially in pro hoops, which imposes a tough salary cap on its teams. Not the Spurs. The Spurs are still a threat to win the title—the same as they have been every year since 1999, when they captured their first. It has been a remarkable run, almost unparalleled in the history of American sport, for the fact that, well, it’s not the Celtics or the Los Angeles Lakers we’re talking about. It’s a dynasty from outside the NBA’s flagship cities.
Their opponent on Sunday, the Chicago Bulls, had the dynasty designation for most of the 90s. They made a run at recapturing it with the arrival of Derrick Rose, now a Knick, and a pair of seasons in 2011 and 2012, when they won 75 percent of their games. But Rose lost a step and then some after suffering a devastating knee injury at the end of the latter season, and now they find themselves, much like the Knicks team to which Rose was traded, rebooting with old parts. Rajon Rondo, a unique, disruptive point guard who helped push the Celtics to a title several years ago, was inked as Rose’s replacement. Dwyane Wade, a native Chicagoan and long-time Miami Heat guard, came to play for the hometown fans near the end of his illustrious career. The signings were maligned: Rondo has the reputation of an uncontrollable head case, and Wade, lacking the three-point shooting range vital for guards in the modern game, is regarded as an inefficient scorer now in his later years. It’s the younger Jimmy Butler, Chicago’s versatile franchise player, who is the team’s best hope to compete in the playoffs. And he makes for one of the day’s best individual match-ups against his small-forward counterpart in San Antonio’s Leonard.
Minnesota Timberwolves @ Oklahoma City Thunder, 8:00 PM
When Kevin Durant left the Thunder for Golden State in the off-season, his longtime Oklahoma City running mate, guard Russell Westbrook, was authorized to play one of the most high-energy, borderline bonkers styles of basketball anyone has ever seen. Durant and Westbrook, two of the league’s five-best players, were alpha males constantly in competition to be the 1a to the other’s 1b. The order would fluctuate nightly, though Durant, who has the hardware Westbrook lacks—an MVP award—was the team’s de facto face. Now, Westbrook and his mutant athleticism and ability to do everything has become the NBA’s most thrilling player by default. He’s a legitimate threat to average a nightly triple-double—at least 10 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists—for the first time since Oscar Robertson did it in 1962, the only year it’s ever been achieved. The depth of pro basketball talent has progressed substantially in the last half-century. For Westbrook to pull off such a feat in the modern game would be one of the most impressive individual accomplishments in the history of sports. He has some help to win games—the electric guard Victor Oladipo and throwback center Steven Adams, whose mustache is the stuff of 1970s Major League Baseball, come to mind—but more than any other player on an NBA team, this is Westbrook’s club.
The Minnesota Timberwolves are Karl-Anthony Towns’s team, and he competes alongside an exciting group of youngsters still enduring some growing pains. The skilled power forward is flanked by Andrew Wiggins, a much-hyped number-one draft pick out of Kansas, and dunk artist Zach LaVine, who has turned into a legitimate scorer. These guys have talent and will doubtlessly win games against better opponents as they jell. They’ve done it against the Atlanta Hawks and the Charlotte Hornets, two likely playoff teams, already, and they did it on the road, to boot. They could do it again against OKC Sunday.
Los Angeles Clippers vs. Los Angeles Lakers, 10:30 PM
In a tectonic role reversal, the Clippers, once the NBA’s doormat, have far surpassed the Lakers, once the NBA’s signature team. The Lakers went decades—from Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West, to Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, to Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant—setting the league standard. The Clippers went decades selecting in the top-three of the NBA Draft. It wasn’t until they hit with Oklahoma Sooner and ubiquitous Kia spokesman Blake Griffin in 2009 that their fortunes changed for at least a medium haul. Grouped with perennial All-Star point guard (and ubiquitous State Farm spokesman) Chris Paul, shot-blocking and rebound monster DeAndre Jordan, and an able supporting cast, Griffin and company could make a case for being the NBA’s second-best side. Already they’ve thumped Cleveland on the Cavs’ home floor and beaten San Antonio in both their meetings this year. They actually outscored Golden State from the second quarter-on in their lone encounter thus far. If only the Warriors hadn’t won the first quarter by a score of 37 to 19.
The Lakers are rebuilding. And if it’s been painful to watch, it must be all the more frustrating to endure. Their win percentages from the last three years have been on the decline, from 33 percent to 26 percent to a woeful 21 percent—good, if we dare use that word, for a record of 17-65 a year ago. They’re probably the worst team playing on Christmas day, but they could be poised to post their best season since 2013. Their franchise’s hope, number-two overall pick from a year ago D’Angelo Russell, is still a raw scoring guard working to become more efficient with his shot and more careful with his handle of the ball. He’ll have his work cut out against Paul, who has long been one of the league’s elite defensive players at point guard.
