The NBA will bring a seventh regular-season game to London next January when the Denver Nuggets meet the Indiana Pacers at the O2 Arena, league officials announced Thursday. US Olympian Paul George is set to lead the Pacers against Italy's Danilo Gallinari and the Nuggets on January 12. It will be the first time either team has played in Britain. "We are thrilled to return for our seventh regular-season game in London," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. "With almost 25 percent of players in the NBA born outside of the United States, we are seeing firsthand the global growth of our game." George, a three-time NBA All-Star, is back from a severe leg injury that kept him off the 2014 US Basketball World Cup championship squad. "I'm really excited and thankful the NBA is allowing us to reach out to our fans in London," George said. "It will be a great experience for us and the fans." Gallinari led the Nuggets with a career-high 19.5 points a game last season. "It will be a true honor and a great experience to represent both the Nuggets and the NBA in London," Gallinari said. The Pacers went 45-37 to reach the playoffs last season while the Nuggets were 33-49, missing the postseason. Nixing Charlotte All-Star Game a business decision NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says the basketball league made a business decision that North Carolina's law limiting anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people makes holding its 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte untenable. "The NBA recognizes that it cannot choose the law in every country, state, and city in which it does business. "We can, however, make business judgments as to where we will be able to conduct our events successfully," Silver said in a letter to US Rep. Robert Pittenger. The Republican lawmaker's district includes Charlotte, which lost the all-star event last week, an estimated $100 million blow to the local economy. Pittenger's office Thursday released Silver's letter, which expands on points the NBA raised in explaining its July 21 decision, along with his response, co-signed by 16 other House conservatives. House Bill 2 excludes sexual orientation and gender identity from antidiscrimination protections related to the workplace, hotels and restaurants; and it overrules local antidiscrimination ordinances. Republican lawmakers passed it in response to a Charlotte ordinance that would have protected transgender people who use restrooms consistent with their gender identity. The state law made Charlotte the focal point of controversy and lawsuits, Silver said in his response to Pittenger's criticism. A federal judge set a hearing for Monday on a motion to block enforcement of the law's bathroom access provision ahead of a November trial in four of the five pending lawsuits. "Under these circumstances, it is our business judgment that we cannot successfully conduct our All-Star game in Charlotte in 2017. It was certainly not our preference to move the game," Silver wrote. Pittenger and other conservatives contend the law protects women and girls from being molested by heterosexual men posing as transsexual women. The NBA is hypocritically penalizing Charlotte while staging preseason games in China, where the government's human rights abuses abound, Pittenger wrote in response to Silver.
