For the past 70 years, the BBC has been preserving unlike other sports in the US, traditions and games at Christmas. • A change will result in financial losses, which you won't get

• LeBron. He also wants to spend time in the family

  Photo:

  IP

Christmas is the closest thing in the US to what we know from Yom Kippur: one day of the year when feelings of unity, partnership, general repose and soul-searching are almost all over. Somehow, the BBC has managed to make this day controversial.

The first reason is that this is the only league in the US that holds games on the holiday itself - December 25. While not as much of a fantasy as the debate around Labor on Yom Kippur in Israel, but also in the US the expectation is that if you don't have to - there is no reason to call you to work at this day. When Stan Van Gundy made a statement about a decade ago, the league fined him.

But for more than 70 years (since its second season, in 1947) the BBC have insisted on preserving this tradition. And even if it is far from capturing the American attention and consensus as Thanksgiving football games do, this game has a respectable and rich history of big gatherings, historical shows, dramas and ratings better than almost any other game in the regular season.

Janis. No fear he will rest on holiday // Photo: IP

The second reason the controversial event is more modern, and related to what may be the hottest, perhaps even the most important, issue around the league today - the games load, and Load Management.

Even if the schedule is less crowded than before, thanks to the league's repairs, and even though there have been years of similar pace in terms of game-breaking attacks, the league is still in an unprecedented situation in terms of the combination of game speed and spacing that produces more movement for players' peak athletics, whatever Which increases the risk of injuries.

This comes after nearly a whole generation of players went down the drain because of injuries in the 1990s, and as usual, Greg Popovich and the Spurs spent years ahead of everyone and taught the league how to divide loads. And so, in a league where everyone is smart and everyone is copying each other, today we see how most stars play less than 35 minutes per game (compared to 40 and up until a few years ago), taking occasional evenings here.

Color lust overcomes more important values ​​// Photo: Reuters

So not that anyone is worried that the big stars will actually rest this evening, which is very important for the league. But this is always an opportunity when the debate arises - and one popular argument is that since this is the first evening of the season when Americans are drawing national attention to the NBA, when the ratings are shuffling in the first few weeks and most of the population is following the season finale and the peak of the football season, why not do it On the season opener?

That's what happened in the shortened 2011/12 season, when the season's opening was postponed due to a strike. The first game was the restoration of the final, with one difference that LeBron James was huge and defeated Dirk Nowitzki's Dallas with Miami, and in a game that ended the day Kevin Durant scored 30 points in Oklahoma City's win over Orlando.

And very fittingly for Christmas, almost everyone was united in one feeling: that's the right thing to do. It's the perfect opening night for the league, en route to 70-65 games (and not 82). For that to really happen, the league would have to give up quite a few games and quite a bit of revenue. And if there's one thing more American than a false sense of unity in Christmas, it's not to do the right thing because of greed.