The Indiana Pacers won’t play on Christmas and they don’t have a reason to

Keeping with an annual tradition, the NBA is once again holding the Christmas Games and has set the stage for a blockbuster night to spearhead the festivities. With the day slated to banner some of the league’s hottest and biggest names, the Indiana Pacers were unsurprisingly left out.

The Pacers being relegated to spectators on Christmas is, well, actually a continuance of a longstanding absence in the festivities. Since Indiana’s entrance in the NBA, the franchise has only played on the Yuletide for a total of four times, with their last bout coming in 2004.

Still, given their recent turmoil, lack of relevant success, dearth of big names and small marketability, which they failed to offset at all, there’s really no reason for the Blue and Gold to be lacing their shoes up for Christmas. The festive games are usually headlined more by dramatic narratives instead of mere on-court success, though the latter, more often that not, is intertwined with the former.

Alas, even in the early 2010s, when the Pacers were among the league’s best teams, the team failed to have a ticket punched for the Christmas Games. However, their great record and smoke-filled rivalry with the “Heatles” led by LeBron James still wasn’t enough for the league to match them up against the bigger teams, at least from a popularity standpoint.

The Indiana Pacers are not on the NBA’s recently released Christmas Slate

In the present, Indiana is a significantly less garish squad. Not only is the team among the smallest markets in the association, but they just missed the playoffs last season. Aside from devoted local circles, no one will really bat an eye and break the bank to see the Pacers play.

It also doesn’t help their case that they don’t have anyone on the roster who can flip the switch single-handedly and instantly mount a compelling narrative to embed the Pacers on the Christmas Slate. The closest they’ve had in the past decade was Paul George, who has long moved on from the Circle City.

Digging through the records, the last team which paraded Indiana on the red calendar day was the infamous Malice in the Palace squad headed by Ron Artest, Jermaine O’Neal, Reggie Miller and Stephen Jackson. Now, that’s a whole lot of smoke, especially considering that it came against, well, the Pistons.

On the bright side, the Pacers sitting out on Christmas should bode well not only for their families, but also with the wear-and-tear. For an injury-prone roster, a full day of rest may just be difference between getting shelved with an injury or staying healthy. It’s not much, but given Indiana’s lengthy precedence with injuries, their margin of error is substantially low.

Ultimately, aside from the glitz and glamour, there’s really no reason for the Indiana Pacers to play on Christmas and the league knows it too. However, fans who are hoping to see the Blue and Gold duke it out to kick off the festivities may need to wait a long while for it to happen.