Taipans lack venom when it counts

Adam Forde has never been one to make excuses for his team, but with two of your most vital pieces out, it's hard to recognise their impact.

The Cairns Taipans have been missing Taran Armstrong and Tanner Groves since early October, and ultimately, gone on a three-match losing streak in their absence. 

They've been more than competitive with their star pair sidelined, but as a young and developing team, need their best players on the court. 

"It is who you want closing out the game," Forde said following a 12-point loss to Illawarra.

"That's where we do come back to the pieces that are out, because that's 40 per cent of the lineup who are expected to close out those games.

"It's a tricky one because they are playing hard, there's no one that's going out there half hearted. They play hard and I was really tough on them this week in a lot of areas that we wanted to be better at.

"They know it and they see it, and feel it, but we are what we are in the sense that we're missing two key, big pieces. I want to be careful, because I don’t suddenly want to become reliant on them being the saviours when they come back.

"It has to be really important that we don't sit in the locker room thinking it will be fine when Tanner and Taran come back, because what happens if we drop a game with those guys.

"It's still a loss with things to take away from it good and bad, but all those guys care about it and are feeling it right now. We just need to get them some help."

The Taipans produced a tremendous first half performance for the most part, including scoring 11 straight points early on, building a five-point lead on several occasions in the second term.

But they conceded the last seven points of the half to give up a two-point lead into the break, when Tyler Harvey hit a three on the buzzer.

That's when Forde felt the momentum shift for the first time. Cairns trailed by a solitary point at three-quarter time, but couldn't get it done when it mattered most. 

"We became passive in that last minute and-a-half or two minutes of the half and I don't want to keep harping on it, but that's what Taran does a pretty good job of is controlling the pace of the game, and went to level up and drop it down a few gears," Forde added.

"That hurt us going into half-time and if you're Illawarra you are feeling pretty good about the momentum rolling into that 12-minute break. For us, we had to address the fact that there was some slippage and we had to reset."

Sitting just inside the top six with three wins from seven games, the Taipans face two of the toughest teams in the league across this weekend, travelling to Adelaide on Friday, then Melbourne on Sunday.