Heat back on NBA’s Christmas Day schedule, tentatively scheduled to host Pelicans
It looks like the Miami Heat will be home for Christmas.
The NBA’s tentative Christmas Day schedule includes a matchup between the Heat and New Orleans Pelicans at noon at AmericanAirlines Arena, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported Tuesday night.
The Heat-Pelicans matchup is the first of five games tentatively scheduled for Christmas Day, which also includes the Golden State Warriors at Milwaukee Bucks at 2:30 p.m., the Brooklyn Nets at Boston Celtics at 5 p.m., the Dallas Mavericks at Los Angeles Lakers at 8 p.m., and the Los Angeles Clippers at Denver Nuggets at 10:30 p.m.
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The NBA’s Christmas Day games will be televised on either ABC or ESPN, with the noon slot usually scheduled for ESPN.
The full schedule for the first half of the regular season (Dec. 22 – March 4) is expected to be released in the coming days.
The Heat has not yet announced if any amount of fans will be allowed to attend home games to start the season amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but most NBA teams that have already made that decision have decided to begin the season without any fans in attendance.
The Heat owns a 10-2 all-time record in Christmas Day games. The last time Miami played on Christmas came in 2015, coincidentally when the Heat earned a 94-88 overtime home win over the Pelicans in the noon slot.
It’s not a surprise the Heat was picked for a Christmas Day game this season, as Miami represented the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals just a few months ago. The Lakers won the championship series, 4-2, over the Heat.
Individual workouts at team facilities across the NBA were allowed to begin Tuesday (capped at four players and four coaches/player development personnel at one time to mitigate spread of COVID-19). The Heat and teams around the league are allowed to begin group practices on Sunday.
The COVID-19 pandemic-shortened 72-game regular season is scheduled to begin on Dec. 22.
