National Basketball Association

NBA regular season returns to London

Published Oct. 4, 2012 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

The NBA is coming back to London with a regular-season game between the Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks in January.

The NBA says the Pistons and Knicks will play on Jan. 17 at the O2 Arena, the site of this year's Olympic gold-medal game.

The Toronto Raptors and New Jersey Nets played a pair of regular-season games at the same venue in March 2011, but the NBA skipped London on its preseason tour this year.

NBA Commissioner David Stern says ''playing our third regular-season game in the city in three years and having historic franchises like the Knicks and Pistons serve as our ambassadors provide extraordinary opportunities to further the game's growth and development in the UK and throughout Europe.''