NEW YORK – It probably wasn’t a difficult decision at first, but scheduling Victor Wembanyama for his Christmas debut at Madison Square Garden was the right decision for a league struggling for attention.

Wembanyama put together one of the greatest Christmas performances in the NBA’s 77-year history, but the New York Knicks, one of the league’s most popular franchises, defeated his San Antonio Spurs 117-114 to open the league’s annual Christmas slate.

Wembanyama, the No. 1 pick in 2023, the reigning rookie of the year and a rising 7-foot-4 superstar who turns 21 next month and can seemingly do anything on a basketball court, finished the game with 42 points, 18 rebounds, four assists and four blocks in 40 minutes. He nearly tied the record for most points scored in a Christmas debut, and no one had ever combined as many points, rebounds, assists and blocks on Christmas.

And yet the French sensation’s great game wasn’t enough, as Mikal Bridges also had a Christmas for the ages with a season-high 41 points and six three-pointers. Karl-Anthony Towns, who faced Wemby, added 21 points and nine rebounds, and Jalen Brunson finished the game with 20 points.

This was the first Christmas game with two 40-point scorers since 1961 (Wilt Chamberlain and Richie Guerin both scored over 40 points that day, including here at Madison Square Garden). In a separate 1961 Christmas game, Oscar Robertson and Elgin Baylor also delivered dueling 40-point performances.

A MIKAL BRIDGES THE CHRISTMAS TAKEOVER. 🎄

🔥 41 PTS (15 in Q4)
🔥 17-25 FGM
🔥 6 p.m

Season high for Bridges as @nyknicks Win 5 times in a row 📈🗽 pic.twitter.com/omBEt2ecTO

– NBA (@NBA) December 25, 2024

“That’s not my first thought at all, I don’t even know the real story of the best Christmas games in history by heart,” Wembanyama said after the game. “I’m just thinking about the game and I just think we’re close, but we’re missing some attributes at times. You know, we’re right there. It was a really controversial game.”

Spurs, who had one of the worst records in the league last season, ended up at Christmas because of Wemby’s stardom. But as a team they had a much better start to this season. Back-to-back narrow losses with lost fourth-quarter leads early in this East Coast road trip have dropped San Antonio to 15-15.

Wembanyama almost equaled Chamberlain’s record of 45 points on his Christmas debut, which has stood for 65 years. And for a minute Wemby actually tied him up. With 6:34 remaining and the Spurs leading by five points, Wembanyama knocked down a three-pointer that would have given him 45 points, but an official’s review determined it was an off-ball foul on the Knicks came before Wemby’s shot went up. He went scoreless for the rest of the game and the Spurs could have used his goal or another rebound.

The Knicks took the lead for good on Miles McBride’s 3-pointer with 2:43 left and were ahead 116-111 with 1:18 left on Bridges’ final basket of the game – which gave him 15 points in the final quarter. The Spurs allowed two offensive rebounds in the final 20 seconds of the game and failed to get a final shot to tie the game.

“I don’t think it was a game about momentum – I think it was about being mates,” Wembanyama said. “When the time goes under five or three minutes, we let them throw a few rebounds at us. We let them move us a little too much. They didn’t win against us because they played better basketball.”

This is the 17th year the NBA has hosted five games on Christmas, but the date came amid declining TV ratings for the league (and most other major sports not called the National Football League) and public narrative that American professional basketball is losing its luster. It will still be days before the Christmas TV ratings are released, but both of the NFL’s Christmas games were shown on Netflix, a streaming-only service, so analysts will be examining whether the NBA was able to bounce back on its big day .

Wemby against the Knicks, where both performed well, should help.

Wemby’s points are the third highest for a Christmas debut, trailing only Wilt and Tracy McGrady’s 43 points in 2000. Wemby comfortably surpassed the Spurs’ Christmas record, previously held by LaMarcus Aldridge (33 points in 2016). In case you’re wondering, LeBron James, who Wemby could one day replace as the face of the league, debuted in his first Christmas game as a rookie in 2003 with 34 points and a loss.

Wembanyama was also just two rebounds shy of becoming the second player ever to score at least 40 points and 20 boards on Christmas. Chamberlain did it in 1959 and again in 1961.

Wembanyama, who played much better on Wednesday than he did in his debut at Madison Square Garden 13 months ago (4 of 14 shots in a stunning defeat), was perhaps second only to the Olympic final between the USA and France as one at Christmas in New York of his favorite moments since being drafted in June 2023.

The experience began for him and his Spurs teammates with a train ride late Monday night from Philadelphia to Penn Station in New York, where they arrived to find snow on the city streets. Wemby had said he hoped to experience the traditional New York Christmas, snow included.

“Everything – the vibe, the music – I felt it,” Wembanyama said.

Bridges wasn’t planning on setting the team’s scoring record on Christmas – Bernard King’s 60 points in 1984 are not only the most by a Knick, but the most by any player that day. But the top 10 scoring performances of all players on Christmas fell from 60 to 44 points, making Bridges’ performance (17 of 25 shots) one of the better games in history on the biggest day of the NBA’s regular season. and it also happened to be his best game yet as a Knick.

New York played an NBA-high 57 games on Christmas.

“That’s why we have to do everything we can, whenever we can,” Wembanyama said in reference to Bridges’ fourth-quarter performance. “(The Spurs forced him) to take some pretty tough shots, but yeah, sometimes (when a player is as hot as Bridges) it’s hard to deal with that.”

Required reading

(Photo: Luke Hales/Getty Images)