LeBron Says NBA Owns Christmas. The NFL Knows Otherwise

LeBron James has spent nearly two decades playing on Christmas. 

Wednesday marked the 19th consecutive Christmas Day game the Lakers star has played in, but this time the attention was on the NFL. 

The NFL played two Christmas games on Wednesday. Though the NFL has played on Christmas regularly in recent years, extraordinarily rare Wednesday games were a sign that the NFL was done ceding the holiday to basketball.

After beating the Warriors on Wednesday night, James tried to declare his league still has a day it can call its own.

“I love the NFL,” James said. “But Christmas is our day.” James’s Lakers played in the fourth of five slots in the league’s annual ESPN/ABC quintupleheader.

Ratings are not in for either basketball or football, but the NFL is a ratings behemoth while the NBA is flagging, leading to endless discourse about the league’s product and marketing.

LeBron might be fighting a losing cause. The pair of Netflix NFL games avoided major technical issues, and while the games themselves were boring as the teams involved were playing their third in 11 days, the schedule is more favorable the next two years.

Christmas is on a Thursday in 2025, and a Friday in 2026, making it even easier for the league to load up on those days. Netflix already has a deal with the NFL to broadcast games in those two years. While the NBA’s product was largely entertaining on Wednesday, with the Sixers, Knicks, and Lakers winning tight games late, its Christmas tradition has an NFL-sized problem. No matter what LeBron James says about it.