Out of tune: United can't find rhythm

It was all about missed opportunity for Matthew Dellavedova and his team on Wednesday night, as Melbourne United gave up home court advantage and an early chance to lift the championship trophy. 

United fell to a 71-80 loss against a desperate Illawarra outfit, which had two key players on the sidelines. 

Dellavedova himself has been a dominant force in the series, and while he still had a strong Game 4 in Melbourne with 17 points, seven rebounds and six assists, he wasn’t able to have quite the same influence he did in Wollongong three days earlier.

After the defeat, Dellavedova's focus quickly shifted to the series decider. 

"We didn’t get in a good rhythm and I needed to do a better job of getting IC (Ian Clark) and CG (Chris Goulding) some easier looks, but we're going to have some really good solutions of how to flow into things a lot smoother on Sunday," Dellavedova said.

"The strength of this playing group and coaching staff is that we're solution based, and everyone comes with different ideas and we figure things out.

"We'll have a good plan together to execute which we'll do a good job of, but it also comes down to the o-boards and 18 is too many."

United coach Dean Vickerman noted the physical approach the Hawks took to trying to stop Dellavedova controlling the game.

"They were disruptive tonight, so we have to have counters and solutions to things being blown up, and flow into the next option a little quicker than we did tonight," Vickerman said.

"Obviously they ramped up their physicality with one point guard and didn’t allow Delly to be a point guard as much tonight.

"We needed to have other people advance the basketball and we just didn’t ever quite find a really good rhythm to initiate offence and get it moving. We kinda expected it and knew it was coming, but just didn’t find a way to get that rhythm of our offence."

Vickerman knew it would always take some adjusting without Shea Ili (concussion symptoms) in the team, but he liked how they did it in Game 3. That wasn't the case in Game 4.

"We knew that not having 'Shili' for that secondary pace and ball-carrier, that at some point they (the Hawks) would turn their attention to how much they could make Delly not carry the basketball, and not make decisions for our team," Vickerman said.

"We've got to find a way through that right now, but credit to them, they stuck to people and with (Trey) Kell and (Sam) Froling out, their level of defensive intensity was outstanding."

Illawarra hosts Melbourne in Game 5 on Sunday from 2.30pm AEDT, live on ESPN, 10 and 10 Play.