LeBron vs. Bronny on Christmas Day: The NBA Just Gave Us Something That Has Never Happened Before
Christmas Day just got weird in the best possible way. The NBA has scheduled LeBron James and the Philadelphia 76ers against Bronny James and the Los Angeles Lakers, meaning for the first time in league history a father will guard his own son in a regular season game.
That is not a headline someone made up for clicks. That is on the actual NBA schedule.
The league dropped the news Tuesday as part of its selected marquee dates for the 2026-27 season. LeBron in a Lakers uniform on Christmas has been a tradition for the last eight years. LeBron in a Sixers jersey coming back to face his old team, with his son on the other bench, is going to be one of the most-watched regular season games in a very long time.
Why this actually matters
The father-son thing is historic. When LeBron and Bronny suited up together in Los Angeles last year, they became the first father-son duo to play for the same NBA team. Now they are about to be the first to play against each other. Nobody has ever done this in any of the four major American sports leagues. Ken Griffey Sr. and Jr. played together in Seattle, they never played against each other in a real game.
The question, of course, is how much floor time Bronny actually gets. He was a second-round pick, he averaged limited minutes in his rookie year, and he spent a lot of time bouncing between the Lakers and the G League. Christmas Day is not usually where a team gives a bench guard extended run. But this is not a normal game. This is a national holiday broadcast where the story is the story, and the Lakers know it.
Head coach JJ Redick has been navigating the Bronny situation for a year. He does not want to force minutes just because of the last name. He also is not stupid. If the Lakers are trying to sell tickets, jerseys, and NBA League Pass subscriptions, giving Bronny a real four-minute run against his dad is not just symbolic, it is smart business.
The other layers
The father-son storyline is not even the most competitively interesting thing about this matchup. LeBron in Philadelphia is one of the biggest offseason moves in years. He walked away from the Lakers after eight seasons, signed a two-year, $7.94 million deal with the Sixers, and joined a roster that also just added Jaylen Brown in a summer trade with Boston. That is a top-heavy super team.
Meanwhile the Lakers are still Luka Doncic’s team. LeBron leaving cleared runway for Luka to fully take over, and Christmas Day is going to be the first big test of how that pivot is going. If the Lakers are contending in the West behind Luka and Austin Reaves, this game becomes a real playoff-preview kind of matchup. If they are struggling, LeBron will find a way to remind everyone he left.
What Christmas Day looks like now
The full slate has not been fully revealed yet, but the NBA has already leaked several other matchups. Combined with the 76ers-Lakers game, Christmas is going to be a five-game marathon that basically becomes a national NBA holiday, the same way Thanksgiving is for the NFL.
The league has been chasing this feeling for a long time. They finally have it, and LeBron is the reason. Even at 41 years old, in a new uniform, playing against his own son, he is still the biggest story on the calendar.
Put it this way: if you told anybody five years ago that Christmas Day 2026 would feature LeBron in a Sixers jersey guarding Bronny in a Lakers uniform, they would have laughed. Now it is on the schedule. This is one of those games you circle in August, tell your family about in October, and then somehow forget the score of by New Year’s. But nobody is going to forget the moment.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
