Regular-season NBA basketball will be played in Europe for the second consecutive season, as the New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons are set to play Jan. 17 in London.
Knicks, Pistons to play regular season game in London
The New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons will take their Jan. 17 game across the pond to London, where they’ll play a regular season game in Europe for only the third time in NBA history.
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The game, titled "NBA London Live 2013," will be the 16th regular-season game held outside of the United States and Canada, and the third in London after a pair of games between the then-New Jersey Nets and Toronto Raptors last March. Unlike last year, when both the Raptors and Nets gave up a home date, this is a single game, which had previously been scheduled to take place in Detroit.
The venue will be familiar for Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler -- the O2 Arena was the host to the men's basketball competition at the 2012 Olympics where they won gold for the USA, although it was branded as the North Greenwich Arena for those two weeks.
Each team will have ample time to adjust to the trip across the pond: the Pistons have four days off before the trip and two after, while the Knicks have three days off on both sides of the trip. It has become somewhat customary for teams to take preseason trips to Europe -- the Knicks played games in France and Italy in 2010 -- but this is only the second time the logistically-difficult idea of playing regular season games in Europe has been brought to fruition.
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