Lakers to play Mavericks on Christmas Day?

Adam Silver may have a trick up his sleeve for Christmas Day this year.

Veteran NBA writer Marc Stein reported on Friday that the first draft of next season’s NBA schedule has the Los Angeles Lakers playing the Mavericks in Dallas on Christmas. Stein says changes are still possible before the official schedule release next week but adds that Christmas games usually hold.

Christmas Day games traditionally pit rival teams and/or teams that just met in the previous year’s playoffs against each other. That makes a Lakers-Mavs matchup particularly interesting because one would expect the Lakers to play someone like the L.A. Clippers and for the Mavs to play someone like the Phoenix Suns instead.

Still, the clash of generations posed by LeBron James and Luka Doncic is box office enough on its own. Several Mavs figures, including head coach Jason Kidd, assistant Jared Dudley, swingman Reggie Bullock and newly signed center JaVale McGee, also used to be with the Lakers organization. Independent of this matchup, though, there is another showdown that we badly want to see on Christmas Day.