Once again on Christmas, the Lakers and the Clippers will be two the featured teams on one of the big broadcasting days for the NBA – they just won’t play each other this year.
The defending champion Lakers will take on Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks at Staples Center, while the Clippers will head to Denver for a rematch with the Denver Nuggets team that shocked them in the playoffs last season.
The Lakers face the Mavericks at 5 p.m. PST, while the Clippers and Nuggets will air at 7:30 PST. Both games will be broadcast on ESPN, which first reported the games. The Lakers and Clippers faced off on Christmas last season at Staples Center.
Those are the first concrete games so far of a reduced 72-game regular-season schedule that is still being arranged behind the scenes. The NBA, which is tentatively scheduled to open its season on Dec. 22, is expected to announce the first half of the schedule, running through March 5, within a week. While the shortened offseason has been a logistical challenge in a process that usually takes the better part of a year, many NBA arenas have empty schedules due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Lakers-Mavericks matchup should feature three All-NBA first-team honorees from last season, with LeBron James and Anthony Davis (pending him signing an expected maximum-salary contract with the Lakers) going against Doncic, a top-four MVP finisher. Doncic and James were two of the three players in the league who averaged more than 25 points and 8 assists last season (Atlanta’s Trae Young was the other).
While forward Kristaps Porzingis is expected to be out until at least January with injury, the Lakers and Mavericks had compelling matchups last season, including a Lakers overtime win in Dallas. The Lakers had a 3-1 edge in the meetings last season. Doncic, who looked up to James as a child, is 1-5 against him in his career.
Kawhi Leonard and Paul George will get an early check from the Denver team that dismissed them in September, climbing back from a 3-1 deficit in their second-round series. The Nuggets boast All-NBA center Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, who was one of the strongest scorers in the bubble last postseason (26.5 ppg in the playoffs). The Clippers and Nuggets finished second and third in the Western Conference last season, respectively.
The five-game Christmas Day schedule opens with New Orleans at Miami (9 a.m. PT) and includes Golden State at Milwaukee (11:30 a.m. PT) and Brooklyn at Boston (2 p.m. PT).
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