Christmas Day. Like all of us, LeBron James has a special connection to this festive day. But after more than two decades in the league, there’s one major downside: James has had to spend far too many Christmases away from his family. The 41-year-old has played on the holiday 20 times, scoring a record 507 points in the process. But this year, it appears Adam Silver has taken James’ frustrations into account.

James and the Philadelphia 76ers will travel to Los Angeles to face Luka Doncic and the Lakers at 5 p.m. ET, giving James his first regular-season return to Crypto.com Arena after leaving for Philadelphia. The matchup also gives the league one of its biggest star-driven games on the Christmas slate. But the question is, did this happen after a series of personal conversations?

Former NBA guard Jeff Teague made that connection first, claiming James personally contacted the NBA to arrange to be back home in LA on December 25.

“They were like, ‘LeBron, where [do] you want to play at?’ He called them and said, ‘I want to be home for the holidays,’” Teague said on the Club 520 Podcast. “Bron said, ‘I want to be home opening gifts with my kids.”

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Now, Teague did not identify a source for the claim or explain how he knew the conversation happened. However, his co-host Brandon “Bishop B. Hen” Hendricks pushed back on the idea with some logic of his own.

“If that was the case, Adam Silver, you could have just sent a blank team against the Lakers anyway,” Hendricks said.

“They could have let the Heat play the damn Lakers and put Celtics and Sixers, bro,” one of the other co-hosts replied.

Last Christmas, James (and the Lakers) played the Houston Rockets in LA. It was going to be the first December 25 matchup between the Akron Hammer and Kevin Durant since 2018. While everyone was looking forward to kicking back and tuning into the Western Conference contender clash, James dropped a candid statement.

“I’d much rather be at home with my family,” James said of playing on Christmas. “But I mean, it’s the game, it’s the game that I love. It’s a game I watched when I was a kid, watching a lot of the greatest play the game on Christmas.”

“It’s always been an honor to play it. Obviously, I’m gonna be completely honest, I would like to be home on the couch with my family all throughout the day. But our number is called, so we have to go out and perform, and I look forward to it.”

This wasn’t the first time James spoke about missing being with his family on Christmas Day. All the way back in December 2010, LeBron almost said the same thing, “we’d rather be home with our families.”

“I think the people that even set the games up would rather be home with their family during this day,” James said. “It’s not just a regular holiday. It’s definitely one of those days that you wish you could wake up in the morning with the kids and open up presents.”

December 25 has always been one of the NBA’s biggest stages, with the league building its five-game slate around stars, storylines and games that can draw a massive television audience. This year’s lineup has all of that, from a Finals rematch between the Spurs and Knicks to a late-night Stephen Curry-Nikola Jokic game.

The NBA’s scheduling process, however, is far more complicated than simply choosing which stars want to play where. The league might create hundreds of versions before the final slate is set. That does not mean LeBron’s presence was irrelevant… Silver had said in July that “where LeBron plays will affect the schedule” and that his decision would influence “how we set opening week, Christmas Day, etc.”

Silver’s comments, however, reportedly “irritated” James’ camp because they were being pushed to make a decision, according to 92.3 The Fan Cleveland’s Andy Baskin. But it clearly showed that the NBA was weighing his eventual destination because of the television interest and storylines surrounding him.

There is still a major gap between what Silver confirmed and what Teague claimed. No independent report from ESPN, The Athletic, NBA.com, major newspapers, or other major NBA outlets has corroborated a call between James and Silver or any league official. There is also no evidence that the NBA had a different Christmas slate in place before announcing Philadelphia vs Los Angeles.

The Jaylen Brown – Jayson Tatum angle from Teague’s co-host is still significant. Brown was traded from Boston to Philadelphia in July, ending the duo’s long run together that included the Celtics’ 2024 championship. Tatum remains with the Celtics, setting up their first matchup as opponents since the trade. But there is no credible reporting that the NBA ever planned that reunion for Christmas.

And there is a very straightforward reason Philadelphia-Los Angeles made sense for the league. It gives the NBA LeBron’s return to the arena where he spent his Lakers years, a matchup with former partner Doncic, and Philadelphia’s only road game against the Purple and Gold. The league’s five-game Christmas slate also includes an Oklahoma City-Minnesota and Miami-Boston game.

For now, the confirmed part is that LeBron will spend Christmas back in LA, facing his former team and, most importantly, his son, Bronny, making the game a potential father-son matchup if both take the floor.