NBA Christmas Day stat leaders: Luka shoots up leaderboards with masterpiece vs Suns

NBA Christmas Day is here, and it's as good a time as ever to look back on the holiday classic and see who has performed best over the years. The league juices the schedule on Christmas Day, making it an interesting day to put under the statistical microscope since it generally lends itself to breakout star performances from the league's biggest players.

The minimum threshold for stats here is at least two appearances in Christmas Day games. Stats do not yet include Christmas Day games from the 2023-24 season.

Who has played the most NBA Christmas Day games?

LeBron James takes the lead here with 17, which isn't surprising considering how quickly he entered NBA stardom and the incredible longevity his career has had.

The rest of the list is filled with stars from recent era and a few legacy players sprinkled in.

Who has scored the most in NBA Christmas Day games?

LeBron, for his 17 games, also leads the league in total scoring. Retired players like Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal will soon be passed on this list, but others will stick around in the top 10 for years to come despite having been retired for quite some time because of sizable leads.

Who has averaged the most points per game on NBA Christmas Day?

Luka, who wasn't on this list before the 2023-24 50-point performance, did enough to find himself second on this list after leading his team to a holiday win over the Suns.

Other changes included Anthony Davis jumping from 17 to 10, Kevin Durant dropping from seventh to 10th, Nikola Jokic dropping from eighth to 11th and LeBron James dropping from 16th to 22nd.

Joel Embiid didn't play in the Sixers 2023 Christmas Day game due to injury, a blow to the overall product considering in his four games he had averaged the fifth-most points of any player in the holiday classic coming in.

This is the only top-10 list of the stats we're looking at here that Michael Jordan appears on.

Highest-scoring individual NBA games on Christmas Day

This is a look at the 10 highest-scoring NBA games. Interestingly, the top two resulted in losses despite coming in at 60 and 59 points, respectively. Luka's 50-point 2023-24 game finds itself immediately vaulted in history, tied for the third-highest individual scoring game on Christmas Day.

Tracy McGrady, who also comes in tied at 10th with a 43-point game on Christmas Day as well, had a low-key highlight reel set of holiday appearances. McGrady played in just three Christmas Day games but scored above 40 points in each of them.