Suns officially out of the Christmas-court picture again

Phoenix will miss Christmas Day games for a second straight year, extending a rare run of holiday absence even after a major offseason shakeup in 2025.

By The Apex Times Newsroom2 min readAI-assisted Apex article

The Phoenix Suns will once again be absent from Christmas Day basketball, leaving their fans without the holiday spotlight for a second consecutive year. The team is set for only its second Christmas absence in the past six seasons, making this stretch of missed holiday programming notable even by Suns standards.

The 2026 holiday projection continues a theme that followed Phoenix into the new calendar year, and it traces back to how the roster was shaped coming out of the 2025 offseason. According to Yahoo Sports, the Suns moved on from Kevin Durant via a trade and then proceeded to buy out Bradley Beal, changes that were intended to reset the team’s direction after a difficult balance of performance and payroll realities.

Phoenix’s lack of a Christmas slot also reflects the broader how-it-looks-for-the-season conversation around the franchise. Yahoo Sports reports Phoenix is again being projected to finish under.500, placing the Suns outside the usual orbit of teams scheduled for the league’s marquee late-December games.

The NBA’s Christmas slate tends to emphasize market reach and competitive outlook, so a miss is rarely just about scheduling happenstance. For Phoenix, sitting out again is a reminder that the 2025 roster reset has not yet translated into the kind of season trajectory that typically earns an early-season national showcase.

For Suns supporters, the holiday absence matters in the plainest way: it removes a national stage that can sharpen attention for a team’s identity and stars. It also shortens the time window for the franchise to turn offseason decisions into on-court cohesion before the calendar reaches one of the most watched moments of the regular season.

What to watch next is whether Phoenix can convert the post-2025 transition into improved results quickly enough to change the tone of expectations. If the Suns are serious about reversing the “under.500” outlook that has followed them in this reporting cycle, the first test will come from how they handle the early regular-season stretch when teams jockey for position with national visibility and internal momentum.

Why It Matters

A Christmas absence can report that the league views the team as unlikely to be among the season’s early national storylines.
Phoenix’s continued under-.500 projection suggests the 2025 overhaul has not yet produced a turnaround strong enough to shift expectations.
Missing the holiday spotlight reduces a key moment for building broader attention and reinforcing team momentum through the season’s first major media surge.
The Suns will need early results to break the cycle of skepticism and to earn a place in future marquee scheduling conversations.

Sources

Key Facts

Phoenix will not play on Christmas Day for the second straight year.
The Suns will miss Christmas for only the second time in the last six seasons, according to Yahoo Sports.
Yahoo Sports links the current outlook to the 2025 offseason roster overhaul, including the Kevin Durant trade and the Bradley Beal buyout.
Yahoo Sports also reports Phoenix is being projected to finish under.500 again.
The report frames Phoenix’s absence from the Christmas slate as an outcome of both scheduling and expectations around the team’s competitiveness.