Why the Clippers deserve a Christmas game this year

Christmas Day is always a momentous day for the NBA, as every year on December 25th, significant matchups involving some of the best players take place on national television. League schedulers come together every year to put together the best possible games. Like any playoff-caliber team, the LA Clippers will be eagerly waiting to hear their names called on perhaps the most important day of the regular season for the league.

Frankly, the likelihood of the NBA selecting the Clippers for a Christmas game next season is slim. The reason for this is likely simply the surplus of talent in the Western Conference. With teams like the Thunder, Nuggets and Timberwolves all finishing in the top three of the standings and going further in the playoffs than LA last year, it will be hard for the league to consider the Clippers a top priority.

But just because the NBA sees it that way doesn't mean it should be planned that way. The Clippers are still a team that very much deserves it, more so than their cross-town rivals.

Assuming schedulers keep the same format as last season for Christmas Day, five teams from the East and five from the West will play on December 25. We know the league is almost guaranteed to pick the Lakers to play, whether they deserve it or not. The Lake Show have played on Christmas for the last 25 (!) seasons in a row, including the 2013-14 season in which they won 27 games and Kobe Bryant missed 76 games.

With the league dead set on selecting the Lakers to fill a spot that could have gone to a team with more merit, we have to ask ourselves why the Clippers really aren't worth playing on December 25. This is a team that spent most of December and January last season at the top of the Western Conference and still has big names like Kawhi Leonard and James Harden playing on it.

Meanwhile, the Lakers languished around the play-in spots for most of last season, failing to make it to the first round of the playoffs while fully healthy, while the Clippers lost four of their six first-round games without their best player. Recently, LAC has signed a significant number of supporting players to offset the departure of Paul George, while the Lakers have not made any free agency transfers in the current offseason.

If the average person were presented with a list of both teams' accomplishments from the past year and beyond, the choice would be obvious. But the Lakers' brand name continues to be valued more highly by the NBA than the legitimate accomplishments of other teams. It's clear that the Clippers deserve to be among the (likely) five West teams selected to compete on Christmas, but we should assume the Lakers will be chosen over them nonetheless.