Wizards to face Knicks in New York on Christmas

The Wizards' schedule will be released in just over 24 hours, but in the meantime, we know one thing: the Wizards will indeed be playing the Knicks on Christmas Day, but it'll be in New York, not D.C. From Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post:

In a sign of the the Wizards‘ rising profile, the NBA has scheduled the team to play on Christmas day against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

My guess -- and this is just a guess -- is that it'll be in the noon slot leading off the five-game slate. Heat-Cavs, i.e. LeBron James' return to Miami, is surely going to be one of the two midday ABC games, and it's also been reported that Clippers-Warriors is one of the night games. A New York team has often hosted the first game since the switch to the five-game schedule, and Brooklyn reportedly isn't playing on Christmas this year. That leaves Wizards-Knicks as the obvious noon game.

But we'll see. The Wizards last played on Christmas in the 2008-09 season, when a Mike James-led skeleton crew that was 4-22 at the time almost beat the Cavaliers in Cleveland.