NBA Christmas Day Trends, Stats and Picks

In another unconventional season of the NBA with games being delayed due to COVID-19, hoops bettors may need to sharpen their pencils to find a betting edge for Christmas Day NBA games

Some NBA analysts and insiders would say the season doesn’t truly start until Christmas and this year’s five-game slate has a wide range of betting angles and budding rivalries to sink your teeth into. At FTNBets, we’re in the giving spirit and are happy to share our new NBA Christmas Day betting guide to make back some money spent on the holidays.

The main event for December 25 isn’t your children fighting over the latest Tamagotchi (do they still make those?) or PlayStation 5, but a potential NBA Finals preview between the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers. Both teams are expected to go deep into the NBA playoffs and are in the top five teams listed in odds to win the 2020-21 NBA championship.

Kicking off Christmas Day is an Eastern Conference playoff rematch between the Atlanta Hawks and New York Knicks, followed by the Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks. After those two warmups, the big boys come to play with the league-leading Phoenix Suns hosting the Golden State Warriors, then the Nets-Lakers. The NBA nightcap is the Utah Jazz hosting the Dallas Mavericks. 

Below, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of stats, trends and key info surrounding how these teams and their players perform on Christmas Day. I also provide my favorite bets for each game, and not to toot my own horn, but I‘ve gone a combined 8-2 with my Christmas Day picks in 2019 and 2020. Not too shabby!

Christmas Day NBA Picks 2021

Here’s where you’ll find my favorite NBA bets for the Christmas Day games. I’ll have a side and/or totals pick along with my favorite player prop. With so many players being inactive and/or games being postponed, my picks for the following games will not be locked in until Dec. 24:

• Hawks-Knicks: U211.5 (-110) – No Player Prop
• Celtics-Bucks: Bucks -3 (-110) – Player Prop: Pat Connaughton O2.5 3PT Made +130 (DraftKings) 
• Warriors-Suns: Suns -4.5 (-115) – Player Prop: Cameron Johnson O2.5 3PT Made +170 (FanDuel)
• Nets-Lakers: U226 (-110) – No Player Prop
• Mavericks-Jazz: U215.5 – Player Prop: Mike Conley O2.5 3PT Made +150 (DraftKings)

We locked in our sides and totals on the morning of Friday December 24 but had to sneak away from the family to lock in player props on Christmas morning.  Also, we have betting trends and important news/stats that every bettor should be aware of before locking in your bets.

NBA Christmas Day Betting Trends

Trends can be a nice tool to reinforce a bet you’re already looking at but no one should blindly bet any NBA game on trends alone. That said, some betting trends are too hard to ignore because they just seem to rake in profits for NBA bettors: Full-game UNDERs and home team success:

NBA Christmas Day Unders

NBA Historical Christmas Day O/U Records:

• Since 1993: 36-52-7 (59.1%)
• Since 2010: 21-35-4 (58.3%)
• Since 2015: 11-20-4 (57.4%)
• Since 2018: 8-11-1 (55.1%)
• 2020: 3-2 (40.0%)

One of the easier trends to digest when digging through all the data is UNDERs for NBA Christmas Day games seems to always yield a profit. Since 1993, the UNDER has hit 59.1% of the time, and 2020 was the first year since 2018 that this trend wasn’t profitable.

It’s difficult to gauge how this trend could play out in 2021 with certain stars potentially having to sit out due to COVID-19 protocols or reduced fan capacity in arenas. Still, the numbers have been undeniable historically for this trend and you can be sure that if I don’t love a side in a respective game, you can’t seem to go wrong with defaulting to the UNDER for NBA Christmas Day games. Unlike last year where most teams had 1-2 games under their belt, this time we’ve got enough of a sample size to know how teams perform overall. 

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NBA Home Teams and Favorites

Being at home on Christmas Day is truly what most people work for. Kicking your feet up by the fire with a nice alcoholic beverage or just having a mental break from the daily career grind. NBA players are no different and it shows when you see how home teams perform on Christmas Day NBA games. There’s something to be said for being able to have your regular routine locked in and betting trends show that being the home team has a clear advantage.

Since Christmas Day games were introduced back in the 1993-94 season, home teams have come through for bettors at 57-38 SU (60.0 percent) on the moneyline with an ATS record of 54-41 (56.8 percent) for the spread. While the road teams have started to catch up with that trend recently, what hasn’t changed is favorites typically take care of business on their home floor.

Betting favorites on the moneyline Christmas Day has also been a solid strategy since 1993-94 as they’ve won 69.8 percent of the time to the tune of a 66-29 SU record. ATS favorites have been decent too and were a perfect 5-0 against the spread in 2020. With the 2020 results, ATS faves for Christmas Day NBA games are covering at 55.7% with a 53-42 ATS record.

Does that mean you should only bet on underdogs in 2021? No, because not all underdogs are created equally, but make sure you do your research and feel confident in the favorite you’re backing as the dogs have been not been barking on Christmas Day:

Christmas Day NBA Games – Player Stats

When it comes to putting in work on Christmas Day, LeBron James may as well be Santa Claus. The 18-year vet is the elder statesman when it comes to suiting up on Christmas Day, as the King has taken the court on Dec. 25 some 15 times in his 18-year career.

LeBron has career averages of 25.1 points, 7.2 assists and 7.6 rebounds per game in Christmas Day contests and his teams are 10-5 SU and 9-6 ATS. The one trend related to LeBron is these games routinely go UNDER the closing total with an O/U record of 3-12 and an average combined score in those games of 206.7.

The players who come closest to LeBron in games played on Christmas Day are Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, who have each played nine times for the holiday. Durant is averaging a robust 29.5 points per game in those outings while Westbrook has 23.3 clip in nine contests.

Surprisingly, Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors has not performed well on Christmas Day. Curry sports averages of 13.1 points, 6.7 assists and 4.8 rebounds in eight games. Also, worth noting that Curry has yet to top 20 points in a Christmas Day NBA game. The most he ever scored was 19 points in 2015 vs. Cavaliers.

Want to know how other key players fare during the holiday? See below: