It's the moment we've all been waiting for: for the first time ever, a Golden State Warriors opening night game will be nationally televised when they host the Blake Griffin and the Los Angeles Clippers on Christmas Night on ESPN.
The Warriors' opener to the 2011-12 season will be the fifth game of a marathon Christmas Day schedule, which begins at 9 a.m. PST with a 2011 Eastern Conference playoffs rematch.
Full schedules will be released on Tuesday and SBNation.com has a storystream to keep you updated on that. But for now, an overview of the Christmas schedule.
The three games that were previously scheduled for Christmas were the Boston Celtics vs. the New York Knicks, the Miami Heat vs. the Dallas Mavericks and the Chicago Bulls vs. the L.A. Lakers. With Christmas now being opening day after the lockout, the league added two games including the Warriors game.
Boston Celtics at New York Knicks, 9 a.m. PST, TNT.
Miami Heat at Dallas Mavericks, 11:30 a.m. PST, ABC.
Chicago Bulls at L.A. Lakers, 2 p.m. PST, ABC
Orlando Magic at Oklahoma City Thunder, 5 p.m. PST, ESPN
L.A. Clippers at Golden State Warriors, 7:30 p.m. PST, ESPN
There might be two ways to look at this game: on the one hand, the Warriors are (obviously) an exciting team to watch and Griffin is on the Clippers. This could be exciting.
On the other hand, after a lockout and with limited time for the Warriors' new coaching staff to get their system in place, this might not be exactly the quality of NBA basketball what we've been pining for - gravity-defying Griffin dunks aside, this one could well be ugly.
Either way, we get what we wanted for Christmas: NBA players playing basketball at Oracle Arena.