LeBron James Insists Christmas Belongs To NBA. Does Anyone Want To Tell Him?
In case you're not the person who saw the Christmas Day matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors – two middling teams vainly trying to convince everyone they're championship relevant – then you probably missed the LeBron James postgame interview in which he said something really laughable.
And wrong.
LeBron James is staying put with the Lakers, just as everyone predicted. (Credit: USA Today Sports Network)
LeBron Sees Christmas As NBA Holiday
"I love the NFL," James said on the broadcast. " I love the NFL. But Christmas is our day."
He was saying Christmas Day belongs to the NBA, not the NFL. So, allow us a moment to stop cackling before we compose the next paragraph.
Still cackling …
Is this guy serious?
LeBron is 39 years old and not much good on getting his facts right, but the NFL has been playing nationally televised games on Christmas Day against NBA programming for quite some time.
The NBA's first nationally telecast Christmas game was in 1967 and featured, get this, the San Diego Rockets. But the longest game in NFL history is the nationally telecast game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs – which was played on Christmas 1971.
Few people remember this, but the NFL served up a doubleheader that Christmas Day with Dallas beating Minnesota in another divisional round game.
CINCINNATI, OH - OCTOBER 27 - A Philadelphia Eagles fan dressed as Santa Clause celebrates a win after a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Cincinnati Bengals at Paycor Stadium on Sunday, October 27, 2024. (Photo by Jeff Moreland/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
NFL Now Factors On Christmas
And recently, the NFL has taken a closer look at Christmas and decided it's going to be more involved in the holiday. And by more involved we mean taking over.
The league that took Sunday away from the church now wants to share Christmas with Santa Claus. It's been a slow process. But it has been inexorable.
Before last year, the league said it was scheduling regular-season games on Christmas only because Christmas fell on a Monday. And Mondays are a day in which the league has played for decades.
But NFL executive V.P. of media distribution Hans Schroeder told the Wall Street Journal that the league would not be playing Christmas Day games when the holiday fell on Tuesday or Wednesday. So the NBA would have a seemingly clear path to indeed claiming Christmas viewing on those days.
A Washington Commanders exec has been fired after making scathing remarks about Jerry Jones and the NFL. (Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports)
NFL Christmas Games Will Remain
But a funny thing happened en route to Christmas landing on Wednesday this year …
The league saw its 2023 ratings. Over 28 million watched NFL Christmas games in 2023.
And the NFL saw the potential for making more money. (The NFL loves money).
So the league sold rights to this year's Christmas Day doubleheader to Netflix for approximately $150 million.
And all signs point to the NFL continuing to take the ratings and the money going forward – on whatever day Christmas falls.
"Christmas Day is Christmas Day, and it doesn't wait around for what day it's on," Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said on 105.3 The Fan last week. "We want to be there on Christmas Day.
"I would think the future is whatever day it's on, we're going to be there on Christmas."
NFL Ratings And Money Drive Takeover
The overnight ratings for the NBA and NFL games on Wednesday are not available yet. They might be harder to get this year based on the fact Netflix is a streaming service and not a broadcast network. But we'll eventually have raw data.
So now we have a choice:
Will we believe LeBron that the NBA will dominate and Christmas belongs to that league?
Or are we going to believe the NFL's proven dominance in the ratings, which recently included a blowout of the College Football Playoffs, and has included dominance over all previous matchups against every other sporting league?
Are we going to believe the American public will continue to defer to professional football as the national game over professional basketball?
Are we going to believe logic and our eyes?
LeBron probably should have sat this one out.