Playing on Christmas Day will be a first for Rui Hachimura. The Los Angeles Lakers forward will take the court against the Boston Celtics at 5:00 PM EST at Crypto.com Arena.

The Lakers are staples of the Christmas slate of NBA games but Hachimura did not join them until after the trade deadline of last season. The lowly Washington Wizards never made it to the Christmas slate of games during Hachimura's time there — and deservedly so. Now, he is pumped to play in his first Christmas game, according to Dave McMenamin of ESPN.

“My first time. I've been dreaming about it. I'm excited,” Hachimura said, per McMenamin. The Lakers forward then asked if there would be new uniforms for the game and was disappointed to find out there would not be.

Hachimura is absolutely correct to be upset that the NBA doesn’t have Christmas jerseys. This is perhaps the biggest singular day on the regular-season calendar. The games mean more, great performances are remembered forever and each matchup is carefully decided. Christmas jerseys need to be revived.

The NBA last had Christmas jerseys in 2016 after first introducing holiday designs in 2008. They were the best of the bunch, combining winter and holiday themes with the main colors of each team. After that stroke of genius, they haven’t been seen since that year following Nike's takeover of NBA uniforms.

Every team has to make a new City Edition jersey each and every season but there’s no room for X-mas uniforms anymore? Thanks, Nike. Keep withholding this thing everyone loves while making teams crank out new designs each season that contain mostly crappy or forgettable designs. Adam Silver, it's time to stand up to the swoosh and be a man of the people for once.

Even without the special jerseys, the Lakers-Celtics clash is a big one. It's the first of the season for the biggest rivalry in the league and will feature a Lakers team fresh off of a get-right win and a Celtics team that is arguably the very best in the business right now.

Hachimura should have a lot of memories from his first NBA Christmas game.