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LeBron James Says “Not Having Xmas Day Unis Anymore Really Sucks!”

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King James has spoken.

Throughout his superstardom in the NBA, LeBron James has played in his fair share of Christmas Day games. But he (as well as everyone else in the NBA) hasn’t gotten to wear an “Xmas day uni” since 2016, the last year adidas was the uniform supplier for the NBA. Every year, from 2008 through 2016, teams were outfitted with special uniforms to be worn by teams who played games on December 25.

The special Christmas day uniforms were a product of the adidas era. When Nike took over the uniform contract beginning in 2017, it eliminated the special holiday kits. Instead, Nike created its own “system” of dress, giving each team at least four new uniforms not called “dark” or “light” or “home” and “road,” but rather with names like “Association,” “Icon,” “Statement,” and of course “City.”

After Michael Jordan, LeBron James might be Nike’s most high-profile client, and his words carry weight with the swoosh. This isn’t the first time James has expressed his feelings about the lack of Christmas day uniforms.

Seeing James in a sleeved Christmas jersey is interesting — you may recall that LeBron famously had issues with adidas’ sleeved jerseys as a member of the Cavaliers…

…so I’m guessing he might want those Christmas uniforms brought back.

Anyway, LeBron let it be known prior to yesterday’s game his feelings about the special uniforms for Christmas.

I was never a fan of the special Christmas uniforms, although I guess they were fine for one game a year for the teams who play on 12/25. And I’d certainly be in favor of them returning if the NBA were to eliminate one of the uniforms they currently provide (after the past few years, I’d say the “City” edition jerseys would be the best “edition” to excise). Also, I hope we never see sleeved jerseys again.

I’m actually a bit surprised, with all the influence LeBron probably has with the swoosh, that the Nike hasn’t reinstated the one-day uniforms. But LeBron likely won’t be playing too much longer, so his desires might not have as much influence as they once did.

What do you think of the Christmas Day uniforms? Did you like them? Would you want them to return (especially if that means the elimination of one of the “editions” teams are forced to wear)?

 
  
 
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Comments (18)

    So, I’m a little confused. I saw a pic on the ESPN Facebook presence and it showed LBJ and Stef wearing these interesting Christmas-y uniforms:

    link

    That Golden State one with the knit tree would have been awesome, but I guess this was just a thought experiment by some social media person at The WWL.

    I always found it weird Nike never released holiday uni’s especially since there’s been vocal support from players and fans. Very unlike Nike too, as we’ve seen the numerous amount of alts they’ve released every year.

    I enjoyed not seeing the Xmas unis yesterday. So great to have the teams look just like themselves for an NBA game

    I don’t mind the special unis in theory. I never much cared for the adidas canned designs, especially the ones that had 0 contrast text.

    If they were to bring back the Xmas unis, I’d want something like what come German soccer teams do, specifically Werder Bremen, and incorporate some symbolism into the design. (i.e. a tree or ornaments, etc.)
    link

    As mentioned above by kroner, these would’ve been pretty cool
    link

    We all know the Christmas games are a special showcase for the superstars, so I never thought of them as a gimmick since they were only worn by the teams who played that day. And the color on color matchups and script lettering starting with the Old English capital letter were great. Bring ‘em back!

    Imagine looking at the NBA and thinking, “not enough jerseys, they need to make more jerseys per season.” What a dumb take.

    Jordan was better.

    Unrelated… the NBA should start playing a full slate of games on Thanksgiving. I don’t watch either sport but obviously don’t live under a rock so I understand that Thanksgiving always belonged to the NFL, Christmas Day always belonged to the NBA. Now the NFL wants to start putting games on Christmas? If I were Adam Silver I’d absolutely put NBA games on Thanksgiving as an eff you to the NFL.

    The NFL would crush them if they scheduled thanksgiving games. 93 of the top 100 tv programs in 2023 were NFL games (and that number keeps growing avery year). In 2020, it was only about 75% of the top 100.

    If there’s any concession to the NBA, the Christmas Day NFL games were on a streaming platform, not “network” TV. The NBA is lucky the NFL wasn’t shown on NBC, ABC/ESPN , FOX or CBS.

    At this point, College Football and the NBA (and I guess NHL) should just hope the NFL doesn’t “expand” any further. Sure, there may be fans who’ll watch NCAAFB or the NBA over the NFL, but the NFL is just exploding. I’m sure it’s due in no small part to legalized sports betting, but even without that, the NFL has been dominating sports and entertainment TV for a while, and it’s still growing.

    So LeFlop doesn’t like the NFL in competition with the NBA and wishes he had a special Christmas Uniform. Womp Womp…Too bad.

    No more xmas uniforms. No more lebron or steph on xmas. Play games fine. But dont pawn it off as special.
    Nfl works better. Its meaningful at this time of year. Nba is meaningless this time of year. Manufactured and contrived importance isnt working anymore. Jig is up.

    I dunno. The NFL games on Netflix yesterday were as exciting as watching paint dry. No real history between the teams, nothing especially “special” about them. The NBA on Christmas games at least have years of storyline going for them. And the games themselves were uniformly excellent.

    “…so I’m guessing he might want those Christmas uniforms brought back.”

    Should this say he might NOT want those uniforms back since he was ripping the sleeves?

Comments are closed.