Sydney Kings coach Andrew Gaze says his NBL team won't be intimidated when they face NBA club Utah Jazz next week in the United States.
The Kings will be the first of three Australian NBL sides over coming weeks to play matches away to NBA opposition.
Gaze, who had short NBA stints with Washington and San Antonio in the 1990s, said his side would bring aggression at both ends of the floor in the match in Salt Lake City next Tuesday (AEST).
"We're going in there with the full expectation that we are trying to win," Gaze said.
"We are not just going to be there as some sort of fodder and just go through the motions and be submissive.
"We're going over there to compete as hard as we can and, hopefully, that can represent our competition and ourselves to a point where we gain further respect.
"It's a chance for us to put our competition on the international stage and, hopefully, we can go over there and be competitive and show the rest of the world, not just the NBA, that the NBL is a very strong competition.
"We've got a whole lot to gain and not a whole lot to lose."
Gaze intends giving all 12 of his players a run against a Jazz unit expected to include Australians Joe Ingles and Dante Exum.
He felt the experience his players would gain would offset the challenging timing of the game, with the Kings having a day to recover at home before starting their NBL campaign.
Gaze has had few opportunities to develop cohesion in his new-look side with the full roster only playing one practice game together.
"We're not where we would have hoped to have been right now," Gaze said.
"But we feel like the long-term journey that we're on, we've got some great tools to work with and we've got the potential to be a very, very good team."
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