Tatum has faith in Hawks responding

Justin Tatum is willing to put the Illawarra Hawks' shooting struggles and turnovers down to a bad day in Game 2, with the Coach of the Year confident in how his team will respond in Wednesday's sudden death Game 3.

The last two times the Hawks lost in the regular season, they hit back in ominous fashion, with a pair of 20-plus point wins following their defeats. 

That evidence gives Tatum confidence the Hawks will respond from Sunday's Game 2 Playoff loss to the Phoenix, with a do-or-die Game 3 set for Wednesday night at the WIN Entertainment Centre, with a Championship Series spot on the line.

"Normally after a loss we bounce back pretty well, so we're just going to go off our statistics of this whole season and believe in our body of work, and get prepared and ready for Wednesday," Tatum said.

"It's nothing too much different I need to say but the proof is in the pudding of what we've been doing prior to now."

Free-throw shooting hasn’t been a great strength of Illawarra's all season but they did pretty well for their standards going 17/23 at 73 per cent in the Game 1 win on Friday.

It came back to bite them on Sunday when they shot 17/29 at only 58 per cent including Lachlan Olbrich, Todd Blanchfield and Daniel Grida combining to go 0/5.

"Guys have got to take more pride in doing their best to make their free throws, and taking advantage of that opportunity," Tatum said.

"We missed a lot, clearly, but we'll bounce back. Anything can decide a playoff game, free throws included, and there were a lot of other things that we didn’t do right that we have to get better at."

The All-First Team back court for the Hawks of Trey Kell III and Tyler Harvey also had wildly contrasting games to open the series.

Back on Friday they combined for 48 points, 14 rebounds, seven assists and only two turnovers while shooting 15/37 from the field and 7/16 from downtown.

The difference on Sunday was stark with them going for a combined 16 points, nine rebounds, 10 assists and six turnovers while shooting 4/23 between them and 1/13 from deep.

Harvey was battling foul trouble and eventually fouled out but Kell ended up with just six points and five turnovers with Tatum backing him to bounce back.

"Basketball players have bad games, tough games," Tatum said.

"He did a couple of other positive things out there and found some guys with assists and he had to play a lot of minutes because of Tyler at times being in foul trouble. So we had to use him a little bit more but basketball players can't be great every game."

In the Game 1 win, Tatum only used eight players in double-figure minutes but in Game 2, as he juggled foul trouble and searched for answers, he had all 11 of his players out there for at least 11 minutes.

How Game 3 is playing out will determine which way he goes on Wednesday with their season on the line.

"Our strength is also our depth and we want to make sure we can control the game when we can with whoever we can get in to be productive at that time," Tatum said.

"The guys know that and that's why they are big cheerleaders of each other because they know if it's not their time, they know it will be somebody elses.

"We have the numbers to be able to play multiple ways and the guys should be hungry and disappointed of the way they played today, and should have an extra edge on themselves on Wednesday. It won't be adjustments I need to motivate them with because it's win or go home."