After eight seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron James will finally have his first major reunion with the franchise. The matchup will take place at Crypto.com Arena during the NBA’s traditional Christmas Day slate.
The game will have a special ingredient: LeBron will not only face the team he won the 2020 championship with again, but he will also reunite with former teammates like Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves.
Bronny James, the family factor
And there will be an even more striking situation: Bronny James will also be on the Lakers’ side, so LeBron will be facing his own son in one of the most important settings on the NBA calendar.
The matchup between Philadelphia 76ers and Los Angeles Lakers is scheduled for 5:00 p.m. ET on December 25 and will be one of the five games that will make up the NBA’s Christmas Day.
For LeBron, it will also be his 21st appearance in a Christmas game, a figure that confirms his huge prominence on one of the league’s most traditional days.
The reunion will also have a sporting appeal. Luka Doncic, who now leads the Lakers’ project, will be one of James’s main rivals after having shared a locker room with him in Los Angeles.
The NBA reserved this game as one of the major highlights of its schedule. The Christmas Day slate will also feature Knicks vs. Spurs, Heat vs. Celtics, Timberwolves vs. Thunder, and Warriors vs. Nuggets.
But before returning to Los Angeles, LeBron will have another high-voltage debut with Philadelphia. The 76ers will begin the season on October 20 against the New York Knicks, the reigning NBA champions, at Madison Square Garden.
Thus, the new phase of LeBron James will have two maximum-exposure stages from the very beginning: first, a debut against the champions; then, the long-awaited return to Los Angeles to face the Lakers.
And although it will be a regular-season game, the December 25 matchup will carry special significance: for the first time, LeBron James will return to the Lakers’ home to try to defeat them.
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