Australian NBL teams to play NBA teams for the first time in preseason games

The Jazz, Thunder and Suns are the NBA teams who will face the Australian squads

This season the NBA will be lengthening the regular season by one week, which will help ease the burden on teams a bit in terms of back-to-backs. 

They're doing it by cutting that week out of the preseason, which makes sense, because as much as these guys work out and play basketball during the summer these days, the preseason doesn't serve as much of a purpose as it did, say, 20 years ago. 

Even though the preseason will be shorter, there will still be enough time to make a little history, as the NBA has teamed up with the Australian National Basketball League to stage three preseason games featuring NBL teams taking on NBA teams for the first time. 

The three NBL teams participating will be the Sydney Kings, Melbourne United, and the Brisbane Bullets. More on the games via NBL.com:

The National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Basketball League (NBL) today announced that the Sydney Kings, Melbourne United and the Brisbane Bullets will take part in the 2017 NBA preseason in October, marking the first time that NBL teams will travel to the U.S. to play against NBA teams.

The Sydney Kings will visit the Utah Jazz, featuring Australians Joe Ingles and Dante Exum, on Oct. 2 at Vivint Smart Home Arena, followed by Melbourne United meeting the Oklahoma City Thunder on Oct. 8 at Chesapeake Energy Arena. The Brisbane Bullets will visit the Phoenix Suns at Talking Stick Resort Arena on Oct. 13.

This is pretty cool, especially with the Jazz being involved, as they have Joe Ingles and Dante Exum, both native Australians on the roster.