5 best NBA Christmas moments ever

The NBA has a rich, memorable, exciting, distracting tradition of planting an awesome slice of games on Christmas Day, much the same as the NFL does on Thanksgiving or the MLB does on Independence Day. However, instead of giving these games to the same teams for history’s sake (no more suffering through bad Lions games, please, NFL), the NBA has historically pit its most talented, successful, or popular teams against one another in these games.

As a result, we’ve gotten to see some remarkable players do incredible things right up against each other for decades. Christmas in the NBA is like nothing else in sports; its prestige holding it up in the minds of both fans and athletes and keeping its greatness alive.

We decided the best way to grapple with such an abundance of tremendous Christmas accomplishments was to rank them, because that’s what we do here. There are so many options, but once you establish a criteria (a great player displaying an efficient and victorious performance), it becomes easier, and the list becomes clear:

5. Brandon Roy (2009 vs. Denver Nuggets)

There were several candidates for this last spot, because the record books are littered with awesome Christmas performances, a byproduct of the league’s best teams constantly butting heads. But the opportunity to get really excited about Brandon Roy is always too good to pass up.

The man looked across the court, saw Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith, and decided to go win the game for his team. Roy sprayed jumpers across the court– from the elbow, by pulling up behind the arc, and in slick isolation situations. I miss Roy, and the style the league played that allowed him to unleash the most fun version of himself.

In an eleven-point victory, Roy showed off the efficiency that is necessary to make this prestigious top five list: 16-26 from the field, perfect from the line, and 3-6 from 3-point land. He scored 41 points, dished 4 assists, and turned the ball over only once. If you liked what you saw from Portland during the early LaMarcus Aldridge-Damian Lillard days, the slickness with which their offense churned in the late 2000s is definitely for you.

Next to Aldridge, Andre Miller, and Martell Webster, the spacing and skill on that side of the ball was such that even with only eight men available on Christmas 2009, the Blazers were able to outplay an Anthony-led Nuggets team at its peak. Brandon Roy vs. J.R. Smith is a better battle than any almost any in NBA history, for my money.

Give me a 41-point Roy game over other candidates like Jordan’s 37 against the Pistons or Dominique Wilkins’s 45 and 9 against Charles Barkley’s 76ers in 1987. Every single time.

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

4. Dwyane Wade (2006 vs. Los Angeles Lakers)

It’s a silly quotable at this point: “Get you a man who can…” The joke is usually the language used, but the joke in this case is that there is no man who can do what Dwyane Wade does. There’s no way to get you a man who can match Dwyane Wade’s Third Noel, in which he nearly tallied a snowflake-like 5×5 game.

Instead, he merely tallied 40 points, 11 assists, and 4 each of rebounds, steals, and blocks. That’s a 37.0% usage rate, if you’re keeping track at home, on a team featuring Antoine Walker. A team that was also following up on its 2006 NBA Championship, and facing a formidable opponent in the Los Angeles Lakers during Kobe Bryant’s second-best season. 2006 was right around the time that Wade-Bryant was the premier guard matchup in the entire NBA, and Wade made that intrigue look silly on Christmas, with a whole nation of basketball fans watching closely.

He smothered Bryant into 16 points on 4-17 in a signature “More Points Than Shots” performance, and the Lakers lost by double digits. With no one but Bryant’s buddy Ronny Turiaf scoring more than 10 points, this probably counts as the worst basketball game on this list, but that’s to Wade’s advantage if we’re ranking individual performances. He dominated this one so thoroughly on both ends that the competitiveness of the game disintegrated into a cloud of Wade.

Just as efficient (12-20 from the field, 15-16 from the line) as all the others here, this one should probably be higher. Peak Wade was so great.

Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

3. Charles Barkley (1993 vs. Houston Rockets)

Like Bill Hader’s Stefon would say, this one has everything: a huge number of rebounds, even more points, and a victory against a team on which Barkley would go on to play. Seriously, this game is basically a microcosm of what made Barkley great. On his best nights, he was the kind of player who made you second-guess the guy you had previously thought was your favorite player, making the case for himself instead.

Look:

Tell me you didn’t instantly go look up more Suns-era Barkley highlights after that one. YouTube exists for players like Charles Barkley, so that posterity might understand how such a large man did such incredible things in a sport that usually requires supreme athleticism to reach the greatest heights. And odds are if you’ve found your way into some Barkley highlights on YouTube, you’ll eventually find this Christmas Day masterpiece.

A twenty-point win over Hakeem Olajuwon’s Rockets (who posted a 27-13-6 himself that might otherwise qualify for this list) in which he partnered with Kevin Johnson (36 points, 9 assists) to show that these Suns were for real is a must-see for Barkley lovers and haters alike. Watching this guy is an experience: Disinterested defense, whip-smart offense, physical in every way.

Christmas 1993 was the night that proved to the league what he was capable of with this Suns team, and helped earn him the lone MVP trophy of his career.

Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

2. LeBron James (2010 vs. Los Angeles Lakers)

The back-to-back stretch the James put together from 2008-2010 is one of the best the NBA has ever seen. His first season with the Miami Heat was the more impressive of the two, even as he struggled to find a rhythm within the team’s slippery hierarchy: 26.7 points, 7.5 rebounds, 7.0 assists, and 1.6 steals per game. Forget statistically averages higher than the ones from this James season, his cumulative performance won’t soon be forgotten.

And the carrot atop the cake (this is a safe space for carrot cake love now, right?) was this little darling of a Christmas Day show: the first-ever Yuletide triple-double. 27 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists, with only one turnover. That offensive show, consistent with season norms, was matched (as it often was in Miami) with a ridiculous defensive masterclass. Four steals and only 80 Lakers points- -that’s the reigning NBA Champion Lakers, with Kobe Bryant and friends.

I’m glad James gave us a sparkly individual performance on the league’s best day to jump out at us when we go looking; he’s elite no matter what, but with a triple-double that can rival Ice Cube’s as the most infamous in basketball history, the argument becomes simple. Who but James has consistently given us games likes these?

This one, like most on this list, looks greater in context: 5-6 from behind the arc, 6-6 from the line, 8-14 from the field. A 16-point win in a rare matchup against Kobe Bryant’s Lakers. Sometimes, it’s more satisfying when one legend crushes another than it is when they go toe-to-toe in a close game. James quieted the crowd who wondered about his superiority, despite Bryant’s title earlier that year.

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

1. Bernard King (1984 vs. New Jersey Nets)

One of the NBA’s forgotten heroes, Bernard King, certainly cemented himself in the history books, ensured he’d never be forgotten, by dropping a nice, round 60 on his crosstown rival in 1984 at Madison Square Garden. It was King’s career-high in points; he averaged 32.9 points that season, but the grandeur surrounding putting on such a show at the Garden on Christmas Day is unmistakable.

To truly impress in a Christmas Day game, however, you have to do more than score. Something to put you above the rest, besides getting buckets. Just as King’s career scoring numbers are made more impressive by his remarkable 51.8% shooting percentage, his Christmas Day display jumps off the page most because of the 19-30 shooting performance that accompanied it.

Toss in 7 rebounds and a nearly one-to-one turnover ratio (good for an astounding 46.9% usage rate), and this is the obvious choice for first on a dazzling list. Great moments from the YouTube highlight reel of this one include: Calling the team the Knickerbockers casually; the words “Coach Hubie Brown”; King’s unusual free throw posture; points 40-60 coming almost entirely from pull-up jumpers out of a double-team.

Also this, of course:

Any 60-point performance that includes zero threes is both confusing and incredible. Thank you, Bernard King.