National Basketball Association Christmas games  Games held by the National Basketball Association (NBA) on Christmas Day, December 25, have been an annual tradition since the league's second season in 1947. Currently, five games are played on Christmas. Unlike the National Football League (NFL)'s traditional Thanksgiving Day games, the NBA's Christmas Day games have no fixed opponents; rather, they feature some of the best teams and players. Very often a rematch of the previous season's NBA Finals is showcased on Christmas Day. The first NBA game played on December 25 came in 1947, a year after the NBA's inception, when the New York Knicks beat the Providence Steamrollers at Madison Square Garden 89–75. Since then, the NBA has played games every year on Christmas Day except in (when a lockout canceled half the ). In contrast, Major League Baseball is in its off-season during Christmas, the National Football League only schedules Christmas games when Christmas falls on the weekend (and even then only schedules games on Christmas occasionally) and the National Hockey League's collective bargaining agreement forbids playing games on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day (celebrated as such in Canada as a statutory holiday, though otherwise the non-holiday day after Christmas in the United States; in seasons in which the latter falls on a Saturday, the break occurs one day earlier, from December 23-25). In college football, the only bowl game traditionally scheduled for Christmas has been the defunct Aloha Bowl (and for one year, its replacement, the Hawaii Bowl; that game itself moved its date specifically due to ESPN/ABC's acquisition of NBA telecasts, including Christmas Day games). Thus, the NBA is the only league to regularly schedule games on December 25. In the early days, regional proximity dictated most of the matchups. Teams would usually play their geographical rivals to cut down on holiday travel and to allow them to have more time with their families. According to Dr. Jack Ramsay, who coached the Portland Trail Blazers from 1976–77 (their only championship season) to , "Christmas meant being at home with the family and having a game we always won. That was a perfect Christmas to me." He set the record for most coaching victories on Christmas Day with 11, an achievement that Phil Jackson later matched in . In the early 1980s, the New York Knicks put on a show three years in a row. In one game (), hall-of-fame forward Bernard King scoring 60 points—the most ever scored by a player on Christmas Day, With the advent of television and the excitement caused by these games, the NBA decided to scheduled games over the holiday that showcased the best teams and players.