Mavericks-Timberwolves, Celtics-76ers highlight NBA’s reported Christmas Day slate

The NBA’s Christmas Day slate is here.

The Athletic’s Shams Charania tipped the league’s marquee slate for Dec. 25 on Thursday night, which should make for another great day of basketball even as the NFL tries to fight its way into the holiday with a pair of games again this Christmas.

While we wait on the full schedule release, here’s a look at the five games that will reportedly take place on Christmas Day this season.

The New York Knicks, like they seem to always do, will host a Christmas Day game to kick off the holiday. The Knicks will host Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs in the first game of the day at Madison Square Garden.

While the Spurs are coming off of a fifth-straight season in which they had a losing record and missed the playoffs, and the Knicks are fresh off of their best season in more than a decade, the battle between Wembanyama and the Knicks is sure to be an entertaining one.

The Dallas Mavericks, after their first run to the NBA Finals since 2011, will get to host a Christmas Day game this year. They’ll take on the Minnesota Timberwolves at the American Airlines Arena in a rematch of the most recent Western Conference finals, which Luka Dončić and the Mavericks cruised through 4-1 to make it into the Finals. The Timberwolves went 55-26 last season to earn their third straight playoff berth, which they turned into their first trip to the conference finals in two decades.

Though Dončić and the Mavericks made easy work of the Timberwolves in their series last spring, a Christmas Day battle between the two clubs should be great. And it will provide a good look at the Mavericks with Klay Thompson, who signed with the club after his long run with the Golden State Warriors.

Though it won’t be the night game, this Eastern Conference matchup is the best game of the day.

The reigning NBA champions will host the Philadelphia 76ers at TD Garden in what could easily be a preview of a thrilling playoff series a few months later. The 76ers have reloaded once again around Joel Embiid, adding Paul George to their roster after failing to make it out of the first round of the playoffs earlier this spring. The Celtics will enter the season as favorites to repeat as champions, too, and seem like they won’t miss a step in their effort to defend their title.

If there’s one game to watch on Christmas Day amid family celebrations, this is it.

It’s unclear how good either of these two clubs will actually be this season, but the Golden State Warriors will host both LeBron James and his son, Bronny, in a late game on Christmas.

The Lakers made it into the playoffs last year through a play-in game, but they were knocked out by the Denver Nuggets in the opening round. The Golden State Warriors missed the playoffs completely in a rare rough year for the franchise that has been so dominant under head coach Steve Kerr.

This isn’t the best matchup of the day by any means. But seeing James go up against Stephen Curry is sure to be an entertaining game regardless of how the two teams stack up in the West.

The final Western Conference game on Christmas could be hit or miss.

The Denver Nuggets, behind three-time MVP Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray, are easily one of the best teams in the Western Conference and are more than capable of making a second trip to the NBA Finals in three years come spring. But the Suns, despite Devin Booker and Kevin Durant on their roster, have seemed to struggle in the last few years. They just lost in the first round of the playoffs and hired Mike Budenholzer to replace Frank Vogel as head coach — just a year after Vogel did the same to Monty Williams.

This game on paper looks like it has the makings of a classic Christmas Day contest. But with how things have been trending in Phoenix lately, it could be just another average contest.