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. 

Dellavedova ensured Melbourne handled Shea Ili's absence with aplomb in Game 3 in Wollongong on Sunday with 16 points, 11 assists and zero turnovers to put himself in prime position for a first NBL title and to be Championship Series MVP.

While Dellavedova still had a strong game with 17 points, seven rebounds and six assists, he wasn’t able to have the same influence.

The Hawks' change in plan worked to try and make other United players bring the ball up and run the offence with Melbourne scoring just 71 points on 36 per cent shooting.

Afterwards, Dellavedova's focus was just on coming up with solutions for the deciding Game 5 in Wollongong on Sunday.

"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 like he did for a lot of Sunday.

"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."

For the past two seasons a great strength of Melbourne has been having the two playmaking guards with Ili and Dellavedova.

Vickerman knew it would always take some adjusting without Ili but he liked how they did it in Game 3, but not so much 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.