If the NBA season starts on Christmas, the LA Clippers will benefit.
As of now, we still don’t have an expected start date for the 2020-21 NBA season. We might not even be able to call it that by the time is all said and done. However, over the last week, there has been some momentum gained for the season to start on or around Christmas Day in order to make the league as much money as possible and for the season to return to a semi-normal schedule. That would benefit the LA Clippers in multiple ways.
1. Less rest for LeBron James
The first benefit doesn’t directly involve the LA Clippers but instead their biggest competition. Coming off a championship run, LeBron James has to be worn down. This isn’t a slight to James who has one of the more amazing body maintenance routines out there but just a fact.
James will be approaching 36 years old come Christmas (his birthday is December 30) and he won’t have the usual time off to rest and prepare for the next season. This likely will lead to some load managing during the season.
This is where the Clippers benefit. The team should absolutely push for the first seed this season and if James is sitting out, the team has a better chance at accomplishing just that. The Western Conference is loaded from top to bottom next season. We saw just how good the conference was this year and with Golden State getting healthy again along with improvements from teams like Phoenix, the Clippers will need any advantage that they possibly can get.
We also have to assume that opening night if on Christmas Day would feature the Clippers and Lakers in some regard and if the two are set to square off, having a slightly tired James would be nice. No, the season opener winner doesn’t matter in the long term as we saw this season but it still would be nice to start the season off with a win.