Watching American sports live, from the UAE, takes some extra effort.

Not that things are not available. They are, if you pay a little bit extra — maybe $50 a year — to augment your basic cable package (most of which is not in English) with a set of stations that includes ESPN, Fox and, say, Al Jazeera’s sports channels.

That gives you a fair bit of access to baseball, the NFL, the NBA and college football, among American sports.

I know a few North American fans who get specific packages that will give them complete access to their favorite teams. (That costs a bit more.) The Dodgers, in the case of one co-worker here at The National who has seen maybe half of all Dodgers games this year, which has been such an unpleasant experience that the club ought to pay him for watching.

The tricky part of this “live North American sports viewing” … is being up when it all goes down. We in Abu Dhabi are eight hours ahead of EDT, 11 hours ahead of PDT.

A game that begins at 7 p.m. in New York begins at 3 a.m. in the UAE.

And Game 7 of the NBA Finals, with a 9 p.m. (EDT) start in New York … has a 5 a.m. start here. Which made for an awkward date this morning with an American who lives in our building.

Game 7s in the Finals don’t come along all that often. I looked this up the other day. The previous five Game 7s in the NBA Finals were 2010 (Lakers win), 2005 (Spurs win), 1994 (Rockets win), 1988 (Lakers win) and 1984 (Celtics win).

So, you can set an alarm to get up and watch, or you can do the more sensible thing, which is to see if you happen to wake up while the game is on.

The latter route is the one I chose. I came out of a coma at about 5:45 — or close to halftime. I went to the laptop to see if the game was competitive. And it was: Miami Heat 46, San Antonio Spurs 44. OK. Will stay up to watch.

I put on shoes and a pair of pants, and took two tall Heinekens and a quart of orange juice out of the fridge. (I mean, what do you take to a 6 a.m. viewing of a live basketball game? Beer if it’s still “yesterday” for your host, juice if it’s early “today”.)

I went down a floor and tapped at the door of my American co-worker. In theory, a third Yank was going to be there, too, perhaps a bigger basketball fan than we are. (But as is often the case, with plans to interrupt sleep cycles to watch this or that game, especially if it involves traveling across town, he didn’t make it.)

So, tapping at the door. No answer. I pushed my ear closer to the door. I specifically heard a whistle. The TV was on and so was the game. I tapped again. No answer. I knew my fellow American’s wife was almost certainly sleeping. But the TV was on. And I was dressed and had the bag with the two beers and the quart of OJ.

So I turned the handle of the door. It was unlocked. I pushed it open a bit and peeked in, and saw no one. I opened it a bit more. My neighborly Yank seemed to be asleep on the couch and his wife, thankfully, was sleeping in the bedroom.

I came in. I wanted to see how LeBron James and Tim Duncan ended this thing. I quietly put the bag of drinks on the kitchen counter, and cleared my throat, and the NBA fan woke up. “Hey! I must have dozed off there,” he said …

And so, with all that accomplished, I sat down on the end of his couch and we watched the final 22 minutes of the game. Live.

The silly thing about this was all the effort, and schedule tweaking, and creeping around and, finally, the quiet voices so as to not wake someone more sensible than the two of us … to see a game with a predestined end.

At no time before or during the game did I think the Spurs would win. Not for one moment. Never. I hoped they would; like the average NBA follower, I am not enthused about the way the Miami Heat was brought together, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron deciding to meet up in Miami in the summer of 2010.

But now that they are there, they were not going to lose Game 7 in the Finals, at home.

The Spurs had their shot at King James in Game 6, leading by five points in the final minute, and had failed to kill him. (I saw the second half of this one in my own apartment; before I had loaned the special TV card to my neighbor.) The Spurs were not going to do it in Game 7. LeBron is far better than anyone in a Spurs uniform, and home teams don’t loose Game 7s in the NBA Finals. (Most recent? 1978.)

So, we sat there as the sun came up and the Spurs faded away. They were never going to win, no, but the death blow was Duncan failing to put away a bunny with about a minute left that would have tied it at 90-90.

Final? Miami 95, San Antonio 88. Of course. With some interrupted sleep cycles; I was in the office about three hours later.

Was it worth it? That is the question you ask yourself all the time over here, when messing with your sleep patterns. Middle of the night to watch LeBron win a game I knew he would win?

Yeah. I guess so. To see it forms a clearer memory of it than reading about it. And Game 7s don’t come along every year.

But it’s a case-by-case thing.

And, the preferred drink for a 6 a.m. date with LeBron?

Orange juice.