Special day is Christmas. You know, you get to play the game of basketball on Christmas.

Obviously, I would love to be home with my family, but if I had to do anything else,

playing basketball, it's cool.

That was LeBron James, talking about what everyone is looking forward to when they wake up tomorrow.

Not presents, not stockings,

but the annual NBA Christmas Day showcase. Today, we dive under the tree to unwrap this

year's slate of five games and see how the results may reveal the ghosts of past, present,

and future for the league's

contenders. I'm Mina Kimes. It's Tuesday, December 24th. This is ESPN Daily, presented by Indeed.

Kirk, how's it going? It is going well. How are you doing, Mina?

Kurt Goldsbury is an NBA analyst at ESPN.

So Christmas is a big day in the NBA world.

And while the rest of us, including those of us who cover football like myself,

we'll be lazing around all day, spending time with family, will you be working?

I will be working in the sense that I'll have the television

on and 11 hours of basketball on that television. I can't say that I'll be watching every

second of every game, but I plan on having all the games on and paying attention, particularly

to those marquee matchups, especially, you know, the Celtics, Raptors game, and the Bucks, Sixers game, and of course, the Los Angeles Showdown.

So these games are always good, or they're mostly good. How does that end up happening every year?

Well, the league takes great care when they make their schedule, which is a very, very intense process.

One of the big priorities is Christmas Day.

These are contenders playing each other, oftentimes rivals.

...