Tatum declares Hawks coming for Adelaide

The Illawarra Hawks further consolidated top spot by beating the New Zealand Breakers on Saturday night with coach Justin Tatum declaring afterwards they are coming for the Adelaide 36ers on Monday.

After the Hawks had their five-game winning streak ended at the hands of the South East Melbourne Phoenix on New Year's Eve and losing again in a stunning upset to the Cairns Taipans, the league-leaders have responded well.

It started with a hard fought five-point win on Tuesday night against the Tasmania JackJumpers before they finished a run of four straight home games by beating the Breakers by eight on Saturday night.

The victory improves the Hawks to 15-7 to remain clear in top spot as they turn their focus to playing the 36ers in Adelaide on Monday night.

The Sixers are the remaining team Illawarra hasn’t beaten this season with Adelaide winning by two points in Wollongong back on October 5 and then in Adelaide by 14 points on November 10.

Tatum has both those results still fresh in his mind ahead of Monday's game where he'll do all he can to have his team avoid being swept by the 36ers.

"We're coming, we're coming. We're coming in there Monday and we'll be ready," Tatum said.

"My guys understand that we're not going to win every series and we gave one to South East, we've already given one to Adelaide but we're trying not to get swept. We're coming on Monday.

"It's a privilege to be even mentioned to have the opportunity to win a championship right now since we're still seven, eight games out but with the body of work we've put in so far can give us that credit. There's still a lot of things we need to check off and closing the games out is one."

What Tatum wanted was a complete and commanding performance at home to New Zealand on Saturday.

He got that at least for the first half with the Hawks piling on 69 points on the back of shooting 62 per cent from the field with 7/15 from three-point range and having 17 second chance points, and 20 points off of New Zealand's turnovers.

Trey Kell III and Darius Days combined for 40 of those 69 points, and Tatum couldn’t have been a happier coach with that first half performance to be up 21 at the half.

"We've found ways to win and to lose games all types of ways, but one thing we haven’t done is dominate for 40 minutes and we tried to do our best with that tonight," Tatum said.

"I thought our first five came out to set the tone early of where they wanted to make sure they set the tone for everybody else.

"That was probably the most pleasing part of this game and the way we started and how we kept the foot on the pedal for the first half was pretty good."

While Tatum couldn’t have been happier with the first half performance, he was hoping to see a full 40-minute performance and didn’t quite get that.

The Breakers came out and went on a 16-7 run to start the second half and then outscored the Hawks 30-20 in the fourth quarter.

Tatum felt complacency crept in from his team that he won't stand for.

"It was complacency once again. It was us as a group taking ill-advised shots and then not making some," Tatum said.

"We had a lot of inside layups and guys who had point blank shots that they wish they could have back.

"Then on the defensive end, our communication was unbelievable and then in the second half it was pretty quiet. It was just some complacency and we've got to make sure we keep that same fire for the second half that we had in the first half."