Christmas Day is always a momentous occasion for the NBA, given the prominent matchups that feature some of the best players put on national TV every December 25. The league schedulers come together every year to put together the best slate of games possible. Like every playoff-level team, the LA Clippers will be anxiously waiting to see if their names are called for perhaps the association's biggest day of the regular season.
If we are being honest, there is a very low chance the NBA will pick the Clippers to play in a Christmas Day game this upcoming season. The reason why they will likely not is simply due to the over-crowding when it comes to talented Western Conference teams. With teams like the Thunder, Nuggets and Timberwolves all finishing in the top three of the standings and going further than LA in the playoffs last year, it will be hard for the league to see the Clippers as a top priority.
But just because the NBA sees it from this perspective does not mean it should be planned out as such. The Clippers are still a highly-deserving team, and more so deserving than their cross-town rivals.
The Clippers achieved a great deal last season
Assuming the schedulers go with the same Christmas Day format as last season, December 25 will feature five teams from the East and five from the West. We know that the league is almost guaranteed to pick the Lakers for a game, whether they are deserving of it or not. The Lake Show has played on Christmas for the last 25(!) seasons in a row, including the 2013-14 season where they won 27 games and Kobe Bryant missed 76 contests.
With the league bent on choosing the Lakers to fill a slot that could be given to a more deserving team, we have to ask why the Clippers are truly unworthy of playing on December 25. This is a team that was at the top of the Western Conference standings for most of December and January this past season, and one that still features big-name talents like Kawhi Leonard and James Harden.
Meanwhile, the Lakers meandered around the play-in range for much of last season, falling in the first round of the playoffs at full health while the Clippers were defeated while missing their best player for four of their six first-round contests. More recently, LAC has added a substantial amount of role players to supplant the departure of Paul George, while the Lakers have not made any free agency moves in the current offseason.
If you were to give the average person a blind list of the accomplishments of both teams from the past year and beyond, the choice would be obvious. But the brand name of the Lakers will continue to be valued by the NBA over the legitimate achievements of other squads. It is clear that the Clippers are deserving to be among the (likely) five West teams chosen to participate on Christmas, but we should expect the Lakers to still be chosen over them.