{"id":130436,"date":"2025-08-09T00:53:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T00:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/130436\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T00:53:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T00:53:08","slug":"lakers-hosting-warriors-on-opening-night-rockets-on-christmas-day-daily-breeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/130436\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers hosting Warriors on Opening Night, Rockets on Christmas Day \u2013 Daily Breeze"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Lakers will reportedly host two of the league\u2019s elder statesmen in a pair of their 2025-26 marquee matchups.<\/p>\n<p>The Lakers will open the upcoming season by hosting the Golden State Warriors on Opening Night (Oct. 21) and host the Houston Rockets for a Christmas Day matchup, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/story\/_\/id\/45927979\/rockets-thunder-warriors-lakers-open-season\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ESPN\u2019s Shams Charania first reported on Friday afternoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The game between the Lakers and Warriors will pit longtime on-court rivals LeBron James and Stephen Curry against each other on Opening Night for the third time since the 2021-22 season, with Curry\u2019s Warriors winning both matchups in 2021 and \u201822.<\/p>\n<p>The Lakers-Warriors Opening Night matchup will be nationally televised on the recently revived NBA on NBC broadcast.<\/p>\n<p>In the other Opening Night matchup, the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder will host the Rockets, who were the Western Conference\u2019s No. 2 seed in 2024-25 and acquired 15-time All-Star Kevin Durant in a trade last month.<\/p>\n<p>The Lakers-Rockets matchup on Dec. 25 will be the sixth time that James\u2019 and Durant\u2019s teams will play each other on Christmas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 2012, when James played for the Miami Heat and Durant played for the Thunder in an NBA Finals rematch;<\/li>\n<li>2016-17, when James played for the Cleveland Cavaliers and Durant played for the Warriors in Finals rematches;<\/li>\n<li>2018 in James\u2019 first season with the Lakers in Durant\u2019s last season in Golden State;<\/li>\n<li>2021, in a matchup between the Lakers and Brooklyn Nets that Durant didn\u2019t play in due to the NBA\u2019s health and safety protocols related to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The NBA\u2019s Christmas Day slate will reportedly feature five games on Disney-owned ABC\/ESPN and the league\u2019s biggest stars, as is typically the case.<\/p>\n<p>The Cleveland Cavaliers, who were led to the No. 1 seed in the East in 2024-25 behind All-Stars Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley, will travel to New York to face the Jalen Brunson- and Karl-Anthony Towns-led Knicks.<\/p>\n<p>The Thunder will host Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs. The Dallas Mavericks to travel to the Golden State Warriors, while the Denver Nuggets will host the Minnesota Timberwolves.<\/p>\n<p>The Lakers and Mavericks were widely expected to play each other in a marquee regular-season matchup between Luka Doncic and his former team that shockingly traded him to Los Angeles in February, but <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TheSteinLine\/status\/1953937133066235918\">longtime NBA writer Marc Stein reported on Friday<\/a> that the Mavericks\/Lakers regular-season game won\u2019t come until later in November in the NBA Cup Group Play matchup.<\/p>\n<p>The complete regular-season schedule will be released later this month.<\/p>\n<p>Originally Published: August 8, 2025 at 3:09 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lakers will reportedly host two of the league\u2019s elder statesmen in a pair of their 2025-26 marquee&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":130437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[8604,1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-130436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-lakers","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114996078713678519","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}