Buford outlines Kings' pre-season plan

After a busy off-season, which included his Mexican wedding, Las Vegas Summer League and Fijian honeymoon, head coach Chase Buford is back in Sydney and ready to start the club's title defence.

Since returning to the harbour city, Buford and his staff have been conducting regular workouts with the players still in the area and developing game plans ahead of the start of training camp on Monday, August 22.

"The biggest thing for us this pre-season will be combining the fact half our group has a big knowledge of what we want to do and how we want to play, with the other half trying to drink from the same water hose and learn as much as they can from our returning guys," said Buford, who is entering year two with the Kings.

"It's important we find that balance between not putting too much on the new guys' plates but also keeping the other players engaged, excited and motivated towards trying to defend our championship."

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As he alluded to, the new pieces include import trio Derrick Walton Jr, Justin Simon and Tim Soares, as well as recently crowned NBL1 North MVP Kouat Noi.

"I'm super excited about the new guys we're bringing in, as they'll all add a different element to our game this season," Buford said.

"Combine that with us being able to bring back key pieces like Xavier [Cooks], DJ [Vasiljevic], Gus [Glover] and [Shaun] Brucey, and we're all fired up to get everyone back in the gym and get this thing rolling again - especially as so many of them have been playing well overseas and in NBL1 this off-season."

With a much shorter pre-season schedule than last year, Buford is mindful of taking a different approach in NBL23.

"Last year, we had such a long lead-up to the first game because of COVID-19 delays, so by the time we got to the Blitz, it felt as though we'd been training for months," the 33-year-old said.

"Our whole approach is going to be way different this year, having to put in a lot of offence and defence very quickly, while getting all the new guys up to speed with our terminology and in the best shape possible physically."

Darwin's NBL Blitz, which will see Sydney play Tasmania (September 17), South East Melbourne (September 21) and New Zealand (September 23), will be the Kings' only trial pre-season matches - with no other trials scheduled.

"Our main goals for the Blitz is to get some reps in the legs, stay healthy, get some film of the boys to watch - which will allow us to pick apart the areas we need to improve on ahead of round one," Buford said.

Sydney will open their title defence on the road in Illawarra on October 1 before returning to Qudis Bank Arena for their home opener and championship banner presentation against Brisbane on October 7.