Harvey reveals why Tatum is "special" coach

Justin Tatum was seething with the way the Illawarra Hawks lost two games at home, but the way he built his team back up ahead of beating the Tasmania JackJumpers is what Tyler Harvey says makes him a special coach.

The Hawks had won five straight games heading into New Year's Eve against the South East Melbourne Phoenix, but some horror turnovers late in that game saw them come up short.

They then lost what was almost the unlosable game on Friday night to the bottom placed Cairns Taipans who arrived on a 15-game losing streak where it was a similar story with two intercepted passes in the dying seconds leading to back-to-back home defeats.

Illawarra were still sitting on top heading into Tuesday night's match up back at the WIN Entertainment Centre where they went on to score the 89-84 win against the JackJumpers to improve to 14-7.

Harvey, who had 18 points on 4/9 three-point shooting, knows how a coach handles mistakes from players in between games will be a big determining factor on how those players come out the next day.

As a result, he gives Tatum a lot of credit for the bounce back win over Tasmania.

"One thing that makes JT special is that he knows how to pick and choose his moments," Harvey said.

"He knows how to lock this group back in and obviously we were all disappointed after that loss, and he knew that. You know what, he came in the next day and we refocused and that's what he does well.

"That sets the group up for success and if you had a coach who lingers with it and carries it on then you'll have players out there who are rattled and are too scared to make mistakes because of what happened the last game.

"But he's not like that and that's why the group came out the way we did in this game."

Davo Hickey is one player never shy on confidence, but the way Tatum approached him especially after the Friday night loss to Cairns was going to be crucial in how he came out against Tasmania.

Hickey had a tough night that saw him fined for an incident with Pedro Bradshaw before in the dying seconds, he had a rush of blood to throw an outlet pass that went straight to Rob Edwards to give him the chance to hit the game tying three-pointer.

However, Tatum spoke with Hickey to tell him that he knows how many positive plays he makes with the way he goes about it. He didn’t want him to change anything just because of a couple of moments that didn’t come off.

"He did well and we told him not to stick on that situation a couple of games ago, or last game, too long Davo," Tatum said.

"We told him he's a very special piece of this team and the way you play is a big reason why we have wins and have the opportunity to win games. Every play that he makes is not going to be a home run or successful, but at the end of the day he means well by it.

"So we stuck with him like we do with anybody who makes mistakes throughout the course of the game. Nobody individually lost those games for us, we collectively did and we just had bad moments."

The Hawks got back to winning on Tuesday night but by scoring 89 points it snapped a run of nine straight matches of putting up triple figures.

That's the least of Tatum's concerns because the Hawks won the game and still managed to put up 89 points and win the game against a JackJumpers team who had won eight of the last nine, and has been holding teams to 84.4 points all season long.

"I told the guys in the locker room and the coaches, and said that if we can keep winning games at 89, 90 points I'm OK with that as long as the team scores less than us," Tatum said.

"We're taking every game as a finals type of situation because right now being at the top of the ladder, clearly everybody is going to give you their best shot.

"I feel like every game has been tense and we're getting every team's best shots and they make tough shots against us. I've felt like every game that we've been in recently has been like a finals type situation."