Hawks’ Trae Young laughs off NBA Christmas Day snub, but is Atlanta the holiday’s biggest omission?

Abraham Smith

While the NBA’s annual Christmas dinner table is cause for excitement for every basketball fan, there’s one all-star point guard who doesn’t seem too excited about the league’s reported 2022 Christmas offering.

To This was reported by The Athletic’s Shams Charania The five-game list for the upcoming NBA Christmas Day didn’t waste much time for Trae Young to share his disapproval. (Seriously, Young’s tweet came less than 10 minutes after Charanias.)

With the simple use of six emojis, Young appears to have questioned the fact that the Hawks weren’t included in this year’s Christmas Day schedule, despite the emojis could also suggest that Young bought a trash can that was comically bad.

However, the timing shows that Young is upset at the omission.

If you need a refresher on the teams that will be involved in Christmas, the reported matchups are as follows:

  • Bucks at Celtics
  • 76ers at Knicks
  • Sunning at nuggets
  • Lakers at Mavericks
  • Grizzlies at Warriors

Of the 10 teams scheduled to take the floor at Christmas, the Knicks are the only team that didn’t qualify for the 2022 NBA Playoffs, but their roster could get a nice boost between August and December.

MORE: Could New York make a real game for Donovan Mitchell?

More importantly, it’s basically become a tradition to host a game at Madison Square Garden on Christmas Day — a tradition James Harden is happy to partake in.

Perhaps some of Young’s anger stems from the fact that the Hawks played at Madison Square Garden for Christmas 2021, but he missed because he was included in the league’s COVID-19 health and safety protocols.

Having missed 2021 with the new look, Young and the Hawks won’t even get the opportunity in 2022 based on the reported schedule.

To be fair, there are a number of unknowns surrounding a Hawks team that, after being eliminated by the Heat in five games in the opening round of the playoffs, added another All-Star guard in Dejounte Murray throughout the game Danilo Gallinari sold and, in a separate deal, Kevin Huerter.

MORE: Hawks seek to compete in East with Dejounte Murray takeover

With that in mind, the Heat’s exclusion could be the biggest headscratcher, as Miami finished last season as the East’s No. 1 and was just a few leaps away from promotion to the NBA Finals.

Taking this a step further, the Heat are the only team to finish in the top four of their respective conferences and not earn the confirmation for Christmas 2022.

FTX Arena might not have the same lore as Madison Square Garden, but Heat and Sixers make for a better matchup as it’s a playoff rematch between two contenders. No Love Is Lost Between Jimmy Butler and the Sixers Organization and PJ Tucker left the Heat to join the Sixers in the offseason.

So far, no member of the Heat has taken to Twitter to respond to the leaked Christmas schedule. At least not yet.

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