LeBron James has a daring message to the NFL because it competes for eyeballs on Christmas Day.
That is nonetheless the NBA’s vacation.
For the reason that 2020 season, the NFL has performed at the least one sport on Christmas, and even with this yr’s festivities occurring on a Wednesday, the league scheduled two video games after Netflix shelled out a whopping $150 million to stream them completely, per the Wall Avenue Journal.
However Christmas Day has been a practice within the NBA since 1947 with a slate of video games often being unfold throughout the entire day.
This Christmas included a sport between James’ Lakers and the Warriors — a contest that immediately turned a traditional as the 2 groups traded buckets late within the waning seconds.
First, Steph Curry tied issues up with a 3-pointer with 7.1 seconds left on the clock earlier than Los Angeles’ Austin Reaves gained it for the Lakers with a layup with one second remaining.
And it wasn’t the one Xmas Day sport that proved to be a thriller. All three of the vacation’s earlier video games completed inside a six-point margin, together with a wild 117-114 win for the Knicks over the Spurs.
That was in distinction to the NFL, which noticed the Chiefs knock off the Steelers, 29-10, earlier than the Ravens shellacked the Texans, 31-2.
Protecting all this in thoughts, James made his ideas clear concerning the two leagues enjoying on Christmas.
“Merry Christmas to my family back home, I’m coming home,” James advised ESPN in a postgame interview on the courtroom at Chase Heart in San Francisco. “And I love the NFL. I love the NFL. But Christmas is our day.”
This got here only a day after Cowboys proprietor Jerry Jones made clear he hopes there are soccer video games going ahead on Christmas — irrespective of the day of the week.
“Christmas Day is Christmas Day, and it doesn’t wait around for what day it’s on. We want to be there on Christmas Day,” Jones stated throughout a Dallas radio interview.
“I would think the future is whatever day it’s on, we’re going to be there on Christmas.”
However former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger felt otherwise, talking to how grueling a brief week could be for skilled soccer gamers.
“It’s miserable,” Roethlisberger stated on his “Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger” podcast this week. “It’s a shame that the league does this. It just shows that it’s all about money and this is a way that they can make more money and figure this thing out because it’s not fair for the players.”
Whether or not or not the 2 leagues proceed to go head-to-head throughout future midweek Christmas Days, the NBA can say it had the extra aggressive group of video games on this vacation.
