COMMENTARY

By Sean Deveney

updated 2:15 p.m. ET Dec. 23, 2004

It's the most choreographed day of the regular season and the league's best shot at grabbing television attention during the bustle of football season — it's Christmas Day, and this year, the league has scheduled its two best rivalries to celebrate the holiday. Pistons at Pacers will be followed by Shaquille O'Neal's Heat and Kobe Bryant's Lakers in Shaq's old stomping ground.

There will be animosity, thanks to the unsightly brawl between the Pacers and Pistons in November. There will be drama, too, thanks to the continually embarrassing situations that find their way to Bryant.

Question is, will there be any good basketball? And is it a good thing for the league to put such a hard sell on bad blood rather than the game itself?

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Obviously, league schedule-makers could not have known before the season that the Pistons and Pacers would have a massive brawl a month before the Christmas showdown, but now the league is left with a game that has marginal appeal because 60 percent of the Pacers' starters are suspended.

Fans who tune into the game anticipating a repeat of what happened at The Palace in November will be disappointed — security will be high at Conseco Fieldhouse, and players and fans will be on their best behavior.

As for the Heat and Lakers, Bryant's problems with Karl Malone have overshadowed Kobe's long-running feud with O'Neal. O'Neal, always a showman, will ramp up the rivalry with well-placed public comments, but Bryant's assertion last week that he will use the Christmas meeting to extend an olive branch to O'Neal dampens the drama.

Then there are the games themselves. The Pistons have been in a funk and are not defending with the same intensity they did a year ago. They will face a Pacers team that has been dealing with injuries and the suspensions of Ron Artest, Jermaine O'Neal and Stephen Jackson. The Pacers had lost seven straight games before beating the Hawks last week. Depth has been such a problem that coach Rick Carlisle has given James Jones and Michael Curry regular minutes.

Lakers-Heat figures to be a better game — unless Miami continues its current roll and simply overpowers L.A., which is a distinct possibility. With the Lakers' slight centers, Chris Mihm and Brian Cook, defending the paint, the Heat figures to pound the ball inside to a very motivated O'Neal. It's difficult to imagine how the Lakers can stop him.

Stay tuned. Or not.

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