The Oklahoma City Thunder spent Christmas night in Indianapolis in a bittersweet mood.
They woke up that day at home with their families and opened presents with their children before a late afternoon flight for the road trip, which was positive. But they were also annoyed, whether they admitted it publicly or not, that 10 teams were playing five games on the NBA's marquee day, and they were spectators.
They'd won a league-best 57 games the season before and had one of the supposedly marquee players in the league, previous year Most Valuable Player runner-up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, that the NBA perhaps should've been featuring on their highest-profile day.