Why the Denver Nuggets deserve a Christmas game this year

Christmas Day has become the marquee event of the NBA’s regular season, highlighted by a massive quintuple-header each year. When the schedule is released each year, Christmas is often the first day people will rush to look at and see if their team is playing or not.

The day and the slate are generally reserved for the best teams and matchups that will garner the most interest. The league also likes to showcase its most popular teams and hype up star players and rivalries as much as possible.

The Nuggets should definitely be playing on Christmas

For those reasons, it seems like a no-brainer for the Nuggets to be one of the 10 teams in action on December 25th, 2024. They certainly have the prestige factor in their favor; the Nuggets won the championship in 2023 and tied for the best record in the Western Conference last season. 

They lost in a hard-fought seven-game series in round two, but the team currently has the fifth-best odds to win the 2025 title. They are also tied for the third-highest projected win total in the NBA and have the second-best odds to win the Western Conference.

As if that wasn’t enough, they have the best player in basketball, Nikola Jokic. Jokic is the reigning Most Valuable Player of the league and has won the award three out of the past four seasons. Jokic in his own right is a worthy draw that basketball fans all over the world should be thrilled to tune in for.

The Nuggets have multiple rivalries the NBA can highlight

Beyond the excellent team and superstar player, the Nuggets are also an appealing and worthy choice for a Christmas game due to the rivalries they’ve built with Western Conference foes. The Nuggets have a bit of animosity built up with several other marquee West teams like the Lakers, Suns, and Timberwolves.

A matchup with any of those teams would make for a wonderful Christmas present full of tension and star power. In the past two seasons, the Nuggets have played a combined five playoff series against those three squads, going 2-0 vs the Lakers, 1-0 vs the Suns, and 1-1 vs the Wolves. 

This makes way too much sense not to happen. The Nuggets absolutely deserve to be playing on Christmas and anything less would be a pure snub and a slap in the face to the team and the fanbase.