Desperate stakes, desperate measures

As one of just 12 players to have ever won a championship with the Illawarra/Wollongong Hawks, Damon Lowery knows just how much Wednesday night’s do-or-die Game 4 means.

The Hawks simply must win to keep the Championship Series alive. 

“First and foremost, I need to see extreme desperation,” Lowery said on NBL Now. 

“They cannot afford to come out and trade blows, feel themselves into the game, take what the game gives you. 

“It’s got to be an all-out assault from a desperate point-of-view.”

Lowery says the Hawks must silence Melbourne’s parochial home crowd early, and not put themselves in a position where they need a late miracle, like Game 2 when Tyler Harvey hit the winner with just seven seconds left. 

“You can tell that (the desperation level) without the first minute or two of the game,” he continued. 

“If they don’t come out with that, I don’t know what it would take to get this team up as a collective unit. 

“I know Davo Hickey, Mason Peatling, they’ll run through walls … but sometimes as a collective, they get a little too casual for my liking. 

“You need to lean on culture and lean on leadership. 

“Right now, their leadership is compromised. It’s under question. It’s under pressure.

“You have to realise, ‘what do we actually stand on as a team?’. 

“In the words of Bruce Springsteen, ‘you can’t start a fire without a spark’, and somebody on that team, in that locker room before they even run out on the court, they’ve got to start a spark before they start a fire.”

The Hawks will be sweating on the fitness of Trey Kell III, who is a day-to-day prospect after suffering an impact injury in Game 3. 

But whether he’s there or not, there’s simply no excuses for Justin Tatum’s team. They just have to get the job done. 

Game 4 tips off from 7.30pm AEDT on Wednesday night, live on ESPN, 10 Bold and 10 Play.