NBA schedule: when are the Mavs hosting the Lakers?
The NBA will release the official season schedule in the next fews days and the Mavs are down to host the Lakers on Christmas Day.
There are still around two months to go until the 2022-23 NBA season begins and while there is still no official schedule, this is expected to change over the next few days. In all likelihood over the course of the next week, the NBA intends to unveil the timetable for the new season. However, as is always the case, details about a few games on key dates over the course of the campaign are already leaking out.
On opening night, the Golden State Warriors will receive their championship rings, as is tradition. On this occasion the setting will be the Chase Center in San Francisco, with the Lakers the opposition. According to The Athletic’s NBA reporter Shams Charania, Warriors-Lakers will be one of the two games that open the 2022-23 season. The two franchises with the most media exposure: Stephen Curry vs LeBron James, two of the best players in history. A sound choice.
No NBA turkeys for Christmas
The big day during the regular season is always Christmas. On December 25, five games are always played that cover all of the available time slots in the US. Fans who want to spend the entire festive day watching basketball can do so. As such, Christmas Day games are always carefully selected. According to NBA reporter Marc Stein, two games are already shaping up on the Christmas schedule and involve the Warriors and the Lakers.
In a decision that breaks with the usual tradition, the champions will not receive the finalists at home. There will not be a Warriors-Celtics game on 25 December, but a Warriors-Grizzlies. Ja Morant and company will travel to the Chase Center in what will be a repeat of the Western Conference semifinals, a series in which there was a lot of tension, barbed statements and the birth of a kind of rivalry. In addition, the NBA has also decided to bring together two of its biggest stars: Luka Doncic and LeBron James will face each other in Dallas. It is not be the first time the NBA has staged this match-up on its biggest day. There was a Mavericks-Lakers in in 2020, Doncic’s third year in the league and the first time he was selected as an All-Star.