King: "I'm confident in my team"

The South East Melbourne Phoenix leave New South Wales having played seven strong quarters, which is why coach Josh King won't be dwelling too much on the last of those against the Sydney Kings.

After not playing in 10 days, the Phoenix produced a terrific New Year's Eve performance to snap the winning run of the Illawarra Hawks, before being in control against the Kings on Thursday night.

South East Melbourne were 18 points up just before three quarter-time and led by 13 heading into the fourth.

The Kings put up 38 points in the final term to go from 13 down, to win by nine, to leave the Phoenix clinging to a top six spot at 10-10, ahead of taking on a JackJumpers on an eight-game winning run.

But Phoenix coach Josh King isn't getting caught up in his team's final quarter fadeout.

"I don’t think we should dwell on it too much, because for three quarters we played a hell of a basketball game," King said.

"I thought we were really good and everyone will look at the fourth quarter and we have to learn from it, but I'm really confident in my team. I really am.

"These guys are playing good basketball, we've played really good basketball for seven out of eight quarters and that's what we have to take with us and put in our bag going down to Tassie, playing a team that has won eight in-a-row.

"They're (the JackJumpers) playing really good basketball and I haven’t actually been there yet, so if we want to get a win on Sunday we're going to have to be really tough, and put four quarters together and not three."

King isn't one to make excuses, despite a challenging road run.

"I don't want to use fatigue as any type of crutch because we were up 18 late in the third quarter and we were kind of in control of the game. We just have to close it out and we were up going into the fourth so we weren’t tired then," King said.

"I still think when we're at our best that we're one of the best teams in the league, but obviously in the fourth quarter we didn't play like one of the best teams in the league.

"We'll get better and we have to learn from these things, and I'm confident my team will learn from this. We've got to be better and I think we will be."

Sending the Kings to the foul line for 37 free-throws was an obvious area of concern for King, especially when Jaylen Adams took 18 of those and put up 21 of Sydney's 38 points in the final quarter.

King feels like they didn’t follow the scout on guarding him well enough in those last 10 minutes, but he wants his players to work on that foul discipline.

"I can't say the foul trouble really affected us, I think it hurt us allowing a team to shoot 37 free-throws," King said.

"That hurts and we've got to do a better job of keeping teams off the line especially on the road. That's kinda hard to combat so we have to do a better job of our foul discipline.

"Showing our hands is important with that. A lot of times you get called for fouls for having hands on bodies, so you have to show your hands and knowing what tendencies different players have, so you have to follow the scouting report.

"That's a lot of it for sure and sometimes it's difficult as a player when you have four fouls to give at the end of one quarter playing the same way, and then no fouls to give with seven minutes to go in the next one. That becomes really hard to figure out too."

The Phoenix now head to Hobart to take on Tasmania on Sunday, live on ESPN, 10 Bold and 10 Play from 4.30pm AEDT.