It's time for the best day of the year: NBA on Christmas day. Five straight games of pure hooper mentality you can drown out your overwhelming family with. In honor of the season of giving, I am *giving* my reasons to look forward to every game.

New York Knicks vs. Philadelphia 76ers: A Christmas morning fight

I have no concrete evidence to support this, but I have a feeling we are gonna get a scuffle (or two) in this game. The 6ers always seem ready to dust-up with another team, and the bright lights of a marquee holiday matchup will only fuel things. I don’t want anyone to get hurt or anything, but when I plant myself on the couch and turn on my TV at 9 a.m. to start ignoring my family, I’d like to be greeted with some fireworks. Is that too much to ask? Give me Joel Embiid being held back by the 15th man on the Philly roster. Maybe Derrick Rose will piss someone off. One can only hope, yes?

Dallas Mavericks vs Los Angeles Lakers: More scoring than you could ever hope for

Is anyone else ready to see someone drop 60 points on Christmas? This year might be Luka’s year to absolutely torch a Lakers defense that is missing Anthony Davis. You know what? Let’s get a 50-piece from LeBron, too. I’m ready for 100 think pieces on how this game signified a passing of the torch from LeBron (someone who hasn’t been the best player in the league for a few years now) to Luka (someone who is also not currently the best player in the league).I want this game to end 170-154, I don’t even really care who wins. I want the announcers to complain the whole time about how defense is a lost art in today’s generation. I want them to fully check out and start ranting about social media 4 minutes into the third quarter. It won't matter, I’ll have them on mute. I will be happy.

Boston Celtics vs. Milwaukee Bucks: Actual star power

While many of the other teams playing on Christmas have been bitten by the injury bug, the Celtics and Bucks have their stars ready to shine. Most importantly, we have an epic battle of the dads brewing between Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jayson Tatum. At halftime, I think these two daddios should have a competition to see who can put together a bookshelf faster (Tatum) who can tell the best/worst dad jokes (Giannis, obviously), and who does the most creative job concealing their child’s face on Instagram (Giannis again, those sunglasses emojis crack me up).

Also, I want to see one million dunks and one million blocked shots. These are the best parts of the NBA and I would like to beam them straight into my tender, mollified little holiday mind.

Golden State Warriors vs. Memphis Grizzlies: A Christmas miracle for my beloved Warriors

I don’t care if I am being biased, I am going to be brave here and say I would really like my favorite basketball team the Golden State Warriors to win on Christmas, but I don’t love the way things have been looking recently. Not to sound despondent, but I would even take a tight loss with positive performances by Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole. If all else fails, I will be pivoting my attention to the game within the game– documenting the reactions from both Poole and Ja Morant when either of them does something cool. These boys keep me young.

Denver Nuggets vs. Phoenix Suns: ...Let me get back to you

Please don’t get mad at me, but I am just not so excited about this game! The Suns are weird, DeAndre Ayton hates it there, Chris Paul is a stinker, Cam Payne is still a dork for getting mad about the Zion dunk, and we don’t even know if Devin Booker is going to play! As for the Nuggets, they sit on top of the West, and *still* I am not into it! Ignore for a moment what I said earlier about offense and I will let you in on a little secret: I love watching teams play defense. The Nuggets don’t do any of that! If Devin Booker plays, I will enjoy watching him take this game entirely too seriously, he is really good at it. At this point in the day I will be reaching my max on sports intake, so if I have to snooze through the back half of this game, well, so be it.