Often times when one looks to engage or create storytelling, you loom to either a hot topic that is relevant in the moment (hard to do) or find a quiet space to insert an idea or news into. For many years the quietest period were the two days in July around the MLB All Star game, which has now been filled at least partially over the years by everything from the MLS and NBA All-star Games to the ESPY’s. Still those days are pretty quiet, and no in February with the NBA taking an extended period off after their All Star Game (as well as it being the Daytona 500 this year), some other relatively clutter free days have developed on the calendar. 
However the day which has now become the quietest appears to be Christmas Eve, December 24. Save for some college football in Hawaii, Christmas Eve falling on a Tuesday ended up to be one of the most silent of nights ever, since there was no NFL window and the other sports in action deferred to travel and hopefully some non business days. That will probably change with the calendar (although next year it falls on a Thursday which should again make it fairly silent unless the NFL goes for a late season Thursday night game, which is unlikely). The late PR maven Joey Goldstein used to love to grab those holidays like Christmas for some kind of stunt as well, with the reason being that most people were off and papers needed to publish. Now the ability to self-generate news and find some platforms that would publish gives anyone a chance to seize a quiet period, so long as the story has some substance, to find a voice no matter what the day or many times, the time of day.
For some reason it seems like gambling sites were the most active on Christmas Eve and day this year, pumping out “news releases” on items big and small. Whether any got traction is anyone’s guess, but they were noticed.
Which leads us to Christmas Day, and the NBA, which if you didn’t notice, continues to expand its scope of owning the sports world while the packages are being unwrapped. There are lots of theories as to why the NBA focused on Christmas Day as a launch point in years past. Some point to the ownership group in the early days of the league which was largely Jewish and saw a chance to fill a date when arenas were quiet as the rest of the sports world took off. Some have pointed to the fact that like Thanksgiving, the NBA became a happening for people in certain cities of any faith to enjoy a game in person, especially in New York where the Knicks for some time played on every Christmas Day, before heading home or back to family gatherings. It gave the league network partners an opportunity for live programming on a quiet day (even though the league has taken its fair amount of shots over the years for having people work on the holiday, and for road teams and officials, travel to far off locations on Christmas Eve as well), and in more recent years, has become a merchandising vehicle for new jerseys and apparel as folks head to malls on Boxing Day, December 26 for returns and exchanges of Christmas presents unwanted .
While the NFL will always own Thanksgiving, the NBA has made Christmas their chance to give thanks in their own way almost 12 hours of games, on one network (ABC and ESPN) vs. the NFL spreading across many networks on Turkey Day (FOX, CBS, NBC and NFL Network), in time zones that give you a chance to engage no matter where you are not just in the US but around the world (prime time in Europe for some games, early morning in Asia) with both existing stars and rising ones usually pretty well thought out by the schedule. The messaging for community events is very consistent, with each team telling their local stories combined with national initiatives, and the NBA partner brands like Nike find ways to storytell in and around the broadcasts as well. While few of the games are full on appointment viewing (it is early in the season still, and even Kawhi Leonard, at the end of the Clippers in over the Lakers Christmas night mentioned to ESPN’s Lisa Salters that the one win doesn’t really mean much in the scope of the season), they are great points for the casual and the diehard fan to tune in and watch the NBA maybe for the first consistent time this fall and winter, so the messaging around the games helps go much wider. There is also no need to channel surf, so leaving the screen on makes the ability to follow even that much easier, be it for ten minutes or several hours.
While the merch this year did not have every team wearing new gear, ESPN/ABC did roll out a new broadcast angle, one popular in NBA2K, during Lakers and Clippers in primetime to largely positive reactions as well, again using this large one network window to showcase yet another innovation for the sport and the way it is covered.
There will always be detractors who will say the massive window from noon eastern until well after midnight is too wide and long, and diminished from the quality of games being shown, and that the level of play across all these games will lead to blowouts and tune outs over time. Some will also keep the drumbeat that the holiday is lost with more commercialism and travel for players and staff on what should be a quiet holiday (although let’s not forget it is a religious holiday for many, but it is not a holiday for people of all faiths who are also NBA fans), but that does not detract from the fact that the NBA on Christmas Day is appointment viewing, and the league has done a great job in using the day as a showcase for all positive around the sport (good read from Washington Post here on how the period around the games normally and seamlessly helps ease early season ratings woes) and pivoting off all the stories told that day into a longer view for the rest of the season.
This year, and probably next, will also be a bit of an outlier because of here Christmas falls during the week, as it will be harder to own the day (there as one other college hoops game on TV from Hawaii later in the evening) almost exclusively as Christmas moves to Saturday and Sunday and into an NFL and even college football window the next few years.
However for this year, from a broadcast, messaging and storytelling standpoint no matter where you are or were on the globe, chances are that you watched a bit of hoops if you had an interest in sports, and that for the NBA is a great thing; a chance to engage almost unencumbered for an extended period of time when people are looking to sit in front of a screen and relax. It may not be “A Christmas Carol” or “Christmas Story” or “It’s A Wonderful Life,” which played out whenever we wanted to see them during the run up to December 25 but it was live storytelling that began to open the window for NBA engagement in the coming months, a great reminder of the power and influence the only appointment viewing on traditional TV still has, this year for over 12 hours.
For those who love the opportunity to on white space and drive a message, the NBA is a great example, which on a holiday, was one Joey Goldstein would have loved. Falalalalala.
