Sports fans in Los Angeles have come to associate Christmas Day with the Lakers. The team has been included in the NBA’s Christmas Day slate most years. Travis Rodgers said that may be the case going forward, but once the NFL puts games on that day, Christmas belongs to the NFL.
The NBA will have its usual five-game slate in 2022, but there will also be a tripleheader of professional football on December 25. Rodgers told listeners on 710 ESPN in Los Angeles that the league office better be bracing for a ratings impact, because if the NFL wants your holiday, the league is capable of taking it and turning it into an NFL holiday.
“The NFL is King Kong, right?” said Rogers during Tuesday’s edition of Travis & Sliwa. “They come in and they’re the biggest, baddest show in the world. I wonder what that does to the NBA.”
He noted that the NBA has embraced the holiday as the “unofficial start” to its season. That isn’t good given where Christmas falls on the NFL’s schedule.
“The difference is, by the time you get to Christmas, those games are very very meaningful. Those games can be a very big deal in the grand scheme because you’ll only have two weeks of the regular season left.”
The NFL has not revealed its schedule yet and the NBA is in the midst of the first round of the 2022 Playoffs. We still have plenty of time before we find out who is playing on Christmas Day for either league. Short of finding a time machine and setting up a one-on-one game between Michael Jordan and LeBron James in their respective primes though, it is a safe bet that the NBA won’t pull in the same ratings as the NFL.
