(The Hill) – The NBA announced its Wednesday night contest between the Washington Wizards and the Detroit Pistons had been postponed due to inclement weather in the Texas area, leaving the Pistons’ team stranded.
“Due to severe weather conditions in the Dallas area, the Pistons have been unable to fly back to Detroit after their game on Monday at American Airlines Center,” the league said in its statement on Wednesday, noting that the date for the Pistons-Wizards game will be rescheduled on a later date.
Both teams’ previous contests were in Texas. The Wizards blew out the San Antonio Spurs on the road, while the Pistons lost their contest with the Dallas Mavericks.
Thousands of flights have been canceled or delayed in the past few days due to severe weather that swept through the southern and central parts of the U.S.
Texas has been hit with a combination of sleet, freezing rain, ice, and frigid temperatures, resulting in the deaths of six individuals and leaving almost 300,000 homes and businesses without power, USA Today reported.
“It actually looks like it’s going to be getting worse again across Texas, it is already a pretty big area of freezing rain across western and southwestern Texas,” said Bob Oravec, a lead National Weather Service forecaster based in Camp Springs, Maryland.
Oravec said the icy weather is expected to move northeastward across parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas into western Tennessee and northern Mississippi before it starts to dissipate.
“By later in the day on Thursday it should be pretty much done, and all the … precipitation will be well downstream across parts of the South and where it will be mostly heavy rain,” Oravec said.
By late Wednesday morning, 2,200 U.S. flights had been canceled, including three-quarters of the flights at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and more than two-thirds at Dallas Love Field, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.com. Dallas-Forth Worth International is American Airlines’ biggest hub, and Love Field is a major base for Southwest Airlines.
“All traveling to DFW Airport should consider road conditions and allow extra time to travel to the airport,” DFW Airport wrote in a tweet. “Please approach entry & departure plazas with extra caution. Finally, we continue to treat all surfaces to ensure everyone’s safety at DFW.”
Sources told ESPN that the Pistons, who originally planned to fly out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area after Monday’s game, had spent seven hours stranded at the airport before returning to their hotels. The team won’t be allowed to fly to Michigan until Thursday.
The Dallas school district, which serves about 145,000 students, also canceled classes Wednesday. Nearly 260,000 power outages were reported in Texas, including more than 130,000 in the Austin area, according to PowerOutage, a website that tracks utility reports.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
