Knicks Schedule Evens Up, February Game vs. Detroit Moved to Madison Square Garden

The New York Knicks were in an unusual position to play 42 road games but the NBA has rectified the situation.

The NBA had one last Christmas gift in store for the New York Knicks.

A Thursday announcement revealed that the Knicks' Feb. 26 game against the Detroit Pistons will now be staged at Madison Square Garden rather than Little Caesars Arena. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET, a half-hour ahead of its original open.

An Association statement said that the game was moved due to "unique scheduling complications associated with the In-Season Tournament."

With the switch, the Knicks' 82-game schedule is once again evenly split between 41 home and road dates. As implied in the statement, a Garden game was removed from the Knicks' schedule after their brief run in the knockout stage of the NBA In-Season Tournament.

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The Knicks' reward as the top Eastern Conference runner-up in group play was a date with the Milwaukee Bucks in the quarterfinal round. After falling to the Bucks, the Knicks were sentenced to a visit to Boston. Had the Celtics prevailed in their own quarterfinal match, the Knicks would've hosted the Indiana Pacers, owning homecourt advantage thanks to a better point differential in the group play quartet (which earned them their wild card spot as is). Indiana wound up repping the Eastern Conference in the championship final in Las Vegas, where they fell to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Not only did the loss put the Knicks on the road for an extra night but it also forced them to face the Bucks and Celtics, the current Eastern Conference leaders, seven times over the first 30 games. New York went 1-6 in those contests, the lone win coming over the Bucks on Christmas Day at MSG.

It appears that the Association is trying to make things right with the Knicks by putting the Pistons on the road: barring a miracle or a collapse/shutdown of every team in front of them, Detroit (2-28) has little, if any, shot at the postseason thanks to an active 27-game losing streak, the longest single-season disaster in NBA history.

Entering Thursday play, the Pistons are 11 games behind 10th-place Chicago for the fourth and final Eastern Conference Play-In Tournament spot. That deficit will probably only inflate further by the time Feb. 26 rolls around and the league appears to to agree.

When addressing the extra road game in Boston, Knicks star Julius Randle joked that his team should've gotten to play Detroit rather than Boston as a reward for leaping onto the In-Season Tournament's first bracket. 

"Detroit! That would have been a good one, right?” a smiling Randle declared, per Kristian Winfield of the New York Daily News. "We should have played Detroit. Ah, man.”

Road Warriors: New York Knicks Deal With 42nd Road Game In NBA In-Season Tournament Aftermath

The switch also ensures that the Knicks will not visit Little Caesars Arena this season, as all three meetings are now scheduled for Madison Square Garden. New York won the first matchup by a 118-112 final on Nov. 30 thanks in part to a 42-point showing from Jalen Brunson. Cade Cunningham had 31 points for the Pistons but that wasn't enough to extend their losing streak to what was then a franchise-worst 16 games.

With the extra road game, Detroit will become just the fifth team in NBA history to play 42 away from home and the first since the 1979-80 Milwaukee Bucks.