Ed’s Note: This is a guest post by Aaron Nemtean.
CHRISTMAS DAY PARTICIPANTS: PAST 10 YEARS (2006-2015)
Christmas Day is the crown jewel of the NBA regular season schedule. It’s that magical day when NBA Santa puts its biggest stars and it’s best matchups on display.
The only problem with this process is that the Toronto Raptors are an afterthought, having appeared only once on the Dec. 25 slate. That was way back in 2001, when Vince Carter was one of the faces of the league and one of its most exciting players.
So how do the Raptors get back onto this vaunted stage? The odds are stacked heavily against them, and the answer is far from simple. The selection process is purely a ratings game and hardly a meritocracy, so being good alone isn’t enough.
Looking back at the last 10 years of Christmas Day games, I tried to find precedent for how this current iteration of the Raptors could appear on this special day once again. I found several different criteria that the NBA adheres to when picking its matchups on Christmas Day, some obvious and some more subtle. My objective is to see what scenario the Raptors can exploit in order to appear on Christmas Day. The answer may surprise you.
Criteria #1 – Transcendent Superstars
Superstars play the biggest role in determining the teams that participate on Christmas Day. These players must not only produce at a truly elite level, but their style of play must be appealing to the average fan and their off-court brand must be highly recognizable. They are former MVPS and scoring champions; they appear in national commercials and are on the covers of NBA 2K games. They have also played on winning teams and have had some post-season success. These are the “faces” of the NBA over the last 10 years – Dirk, Nash, Kobe, Shaq, Carmelo, Duncan, Durant, Dwight, Rose, Westbrook, Garnett, Pierce, Curry, Wade, Harden, Wall, Davis, Griffin and Paul
If you put up huge numbers but are on a perennial non-playoff team then forget it, because winning is a condition (Looking at you Demarcus Cousins). Becoming one of the faces of the league is a difficult feat which leaves some very good players at home with their families on Christmas. Whether it’s their style of play or lack of off-court persona, some players just haven’t resonated enough with the average NBA fan to qualify for the Christmas day games, even while playing on winning teams. Think Paul George, Marc Gasol, Damian Lillard, Jeff Teague, and Al Horford for starters.
Unfortunately, the Raptors’ two resident stars, Derozan and Lowry, don’t quite qualify for transcendent star status. On the court, neither has made an All-NBA team. They have two All-Star appearances combined and have zero playoff success. Off the court, they’re non-factors, appearing in no national American commercials or campaigns. Simply put, they are not one of the dozen or so “faces” of the league and are both pretty much in their prime with little room for significant growth. Despite their impressive numbers and reasonably good regular season success, they don’t seem to move the needle for the average NBA fan.
Criteria #2 – Young Phenoms
Having an extremely hyped top draft choice is another strategy to get on that Christmas Day schedule. 2007 saw a matchup of two young phenoms in Greg Oden and Kevin Durant. Oden was so highly touted that he was scheduled to play again in 2008, 2009, and 2010. To be fair, the Blazers also had budding superstars in Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge to help attract fans, as well. In 2009, the Clippers rode their highly touted No. 1 pick Blake Griffin to an invitation.
Unfortunately, the Raptors don’t have that young phenom that NBA audiences are salivating over watching. (Sorry, Bruno).
Criteria #3 – Major Market
Putting a lousy major market team on Christmas Day is actually not as common as one would think. The only premiere TV market team (Chicago, LA, NY) that truly had no business being there was the 2009 Knicks. They weren’t good at all the year before and they had no elite stars to speak of. The 2012 Brooklyn Nets are another example, however their situation is somewhat unique. They had just moved from New Jersey to the Big Apple, along with a major rebranding campaign that included a beautiful new stadium, new uniforms, and an association with the world’s biggest rapper (Jay-Z). They were clearly a team that the NBA wanted to showcase on a national stage and in a major market.
Despite the fact that Toronto is technically one of the biggest markets in the entire league in terms of population, they don’t qualify as a top American TV market.
Criteria #4 – Style of Play
The 2010 and 2011 Warriors and the 2012 Nuggets are the rare examples of teams that didn’t play in one of the major markets, didn’t have transcendent star talent or one of the NBA’s “faces” but got a Christmas game, nonetheless. Steph Curry wasn’t quite Curry yet and Monta Ellis and David Lee were hardly household names. The Nuggets had literally zero stars. However, both teams played a style that was very entertaining. The Warriors had the highest pace of play in 2009 and the fifth highest in 2010, while the Nuggets were second in pace of play and first in points in 2011 while winning 50 games. Their fun and up-tempo style most likely propelled them to Christmas Day invites.
Unfortunately, the Raptors have decided to take a more defensive approach under Masai Ujiri, which has dropped their pace of play to undesirable levels (for viewing purposes, that is). Currently, the Raptors are 20th in pace and have placed tremendous focus on their defense, typified by their offseason personnel moves; a strategy that may be effective for the playoffs but not for drawing eyeballs.
So, if you don’t have a transcendent/electrifying star, one of the “faces” of the league or a young phenom, don’t play in a major American TV market, and don’t play an overly appealing style of basketball, then winning in the playoffs must be the answer, right? Wrong.
Criteria #5 – Playoff Success
As scary as it sounds, past playoff success doesn’t seem to correlate to a Christmas Day invitation. Unlike the old adage, “winning” won’t solve everything.
Barring a championship or a Finals appearance, deep playoff runs often go unrewarded. Case in point, two of the twelve teams to not appear on Christmas day in the past 10 years are Memphis and Indiana. These two teams have recently made multiple deep playoff runs and have appeared in three conference finals combined in the past five years. The Detroit Pistons went to three conference finals in a row (between ’05 and ’08) without an invite either. Even this year, the Atlanta Hawks, coming off a 60-win season and a conference finals appearance, were shunned.
So hypothetically, if the Raptors were to go on a magical playoff run and lose in Game 7 of the conference finals, don’t expect an invitation to next year’s Christmas slate. Get in the complaint line right behind the Hawks, Pacers, and Grizzlies first before you scream Canadian conspiracy.
Criteria #6 – Rivalry (The only hope)
A WWE- style rivalry with a marquee franchise or player (i.e. LeBron James) may be the Raptors only hope of punching a ticket to the Christmas Day slate.
Wizards-Cavs in 2008 is a prime example. The Washington Wizards had no real business playing on Christmas day against LeBron in 2008 (in lieu of Detroit for instance) and defied all the criteria I previously outlined when they did. While it’s true that Gilbert Arenas was briefly a legitimate star in the NBA, making multiple All-Star games, and having averaged an incredible 29 PPG one season, he hadn’t yet quite reached elite superstar status on and off the court, and has since been long forgotten by the average NBA fan.
The Wizards lost in the first round to King James three years in a row, but in the process, created a spectacle of a rivalry that was must-see TV. It had it all: Overly hard fouls on King James, foul line trash talk between the King and Arenas, and Brendon Haywood mocking Lebron in an interview. Even famous rappers got in on the act – after DeShawn Stevenson called Lebron overrated, the King responded by characterizing Stevenson as the Soulja Boy to his Jay-Z. This feud ultimately resulted in Jay-Z releasing a rap track dissing Stevenson!
So even though the Wiz lost three years in a row in the first round, didn’t play in one of the 3 major TV markets, and didn’t have quite the star power or an overly exciting playing style, they were able to get on Christmas Day strictly using the power of entertainment – as cheap or superficial as it may have been.
If the Raptors ever want to play on Christmas Day in the near future, they need to either make the Finals (a very daunting task) or take a page out of the Wizards’ playbook (a much more feasible solution).
The organization has Drake (one of the most famous rappers in the world) as its global ambassador; instead of sucking up and dapping every opponent that comes to town, why not show a little hostility to opposing teams and maybe manufacture a little tension with a star player or their celebrity representatives? Try following Matt Devlin’s lead, which caused a bit of a stir with D.C. rapper Wale, to great fan interest and amusement. Why not lay the wood on the biggest superstars in the game a la JV on Lebron?
All it would take is a few playoff matchups between the Cavs and Raps or the Wiz and Raps, coupled with some heavy trash talk and hard fouls and some outside celebrity beef and we may get ourselves enough national attention to earn a Christmas Day game for once.The NBA loves featuring great rivalries on Christmas, whether it was the Kobe-Shaq “reunion” in ’06 or the Clips/Warriors slugfests in ’13 and ’14.
Remember, it’s all about ratings. So if you don’t have the right stars, style or city, then create the right story! Or goto the damn Finals!
