Christmas Day isn’t just the most important day of the year for our friends in the North Pole. It’s also a landmark day for the N.B.A., where for decades the league has put its top stars and best teams in matchups against each other for viewers to watch while guzzling egg nog. (The league’s first Christmas Day games came in 1947, when the Baltimore Bullets beat the Chicago Stags, 87-70 at the Baltimore Coliseum.)
This Christmas Day comes at a strange time for the N.B.A. campaign, in that it is the first week of the season. Fans won’t be in the stands.