Knicks and Pistons Set for London Matchup
Basketball, traditionally seen as something of an inner-city game here, even began to creep into England’s suburbs. Really. No, basketball was not about to shove soccer aside, even a little bit, but the N.B.A. was clearly intriguing — to me, to my friends, to enough other people in England to create some viability for the league in this country. Here were these superstars from a different world, giants who strutted their stuff in such glamorous locations as Madison Square Garden. How could one not be interested?
Fast forward the best part of two decades, and on the face of it the N.B.A. continues to have some traction in Britain, maybe more than it did when I first got interested. When the Knicks meet the Detroit Pistons at the O2 Arena in London on Thursday, they will do so in front of a capacity crowd that was certainly not coerced into attending. The match was the quickest to sell out of the 11 preseason and regular-season games the N.B.A. has staged in this country since 1993, with every ticket being snapped up within four days of going on sale.
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