Get your 3D TV sets ready, folks, because Christmas is coming early this year.
If you're lucky enough to own one of the prized products, LeBron James and the Miami Heat will be playing basketball in your living room on Dec. 17, courtesy of ESPN 3D.
Deadline reports that the Heat's showdown against the New York Knicks will be broadcast in 3D from Madison Square Garden, and that the game is one of 8 regular season matchups and 6 playoff games that will receive such special treatment.
Earlier this year, ESPN broadcast the World Cup in 3D, and as one of the far-out format's early adopters, it also plans to broadcast the 2011 BCS National Championship game on ESPN 3D.
Unfortunately, even if I owned a 3D TV set, I wouldn't be able to receive the channel because Time Warner Cable doesn't carry it, unlike AT%T, Comcast and DirecTV, which pipe ESPN 3D into roughly 45 million households, with millions more likely to subscribe in the future.
The full schedule of NBA games will be announced later today. It wouldn't surprise me to see the Heat on the schedule again, but hopefully they'll face a more competitive opponent than the Knicks. The big question is whether one of the two Lakers-Celtics games will be broadcast in 3D … since Shaq vs. Kobe is at least as entertaining as "Avatar."
