You can probably forget any scenario in the months ahead in which Otis Smith or Stan Van Gundy sits in an Orlando Magic team bus and says to his players, “Hey look, guys, there’s Big Ben, and there’s Parliament!”

The tentative labor deal between players and owners should save most of the 2011-12 NBA regular season, but the litigation settlement probably didn’t arrive soon enough to salvage the two games the Magic had been scheduled to play in London against the New Jersey Nets.

Those games had been scheduled for March 7-8 at London’s O2 Arena. Now, the games are probably toast — at least for the upcoming season.

The Magic and the Nets had been scheduled to play a total of four regular-season games against each other, with the two games in London coming out of the Nets’ home allotment and the other two planned for Orlando’s Amway Center.

Now, the compressed, 66-game schedule simply might not leave room for two games in London, and even if it does, it might be too much of a competitive disadvantage for the Magic and the Nets to make a trans-Atlantic round trip during such a grueling season.

via Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel