'No blame game': King stands by Phoenix shooters

The South East Melbourne Phoenix have made just 38 of their 151 three-point attempts this season, but it's the other end of the floor that has coach Josh King's attention.

The Phoenix built a reputation as a tough defensive outfit last season, pushing the Adelaide 36ers to three games in the Playoffs. The numbers told a different story, though, and King wants NBL27 to be the season his side actually earns that tag.

The early signs are there after four games, but there's plenty of improvement left.

"I don't think we had a bad defensive performance in this game, but I would say that we weren't very good on defence last year," King said after Friday night's loss in Perth.

"We outscored a lot of teams and we wanna be a [better] defensive team than we were last year and the numbers so far will probably tell you that we are, but we're not shooting the ball like we were last year.

"You have to really scrape back the fat to see what the real problem is."

The Phoenix played at the fastest pace of any team in NBL26 and were the highest-scoring and most prolific three-point-shooting team, but they also conceded the fifth-most points per game.

They have conceded 88.3 points a game so far, down from 92.3 last season, but after Friday night's loss to the Wildcats dropped them to 1-3, defence was still front of mind.

"If we're not making our shots, you need to get stops and you have to dig down and be a little bit tougher defensively to get that big stop," King said.

"I'm super, super, super confident in that group, there's no finger pointing, there's no blame game, and we have a game on Sunday so we have to turn the page quickly and get ready for Illawarra.

"We have a bunch of guys who can make plays for us down the stretch offensively, but we have to be more focused on the defensive side of the ball and get stops and defensive rebounds, which we didn't get enough of."

With Jordan Hunter, Skylar Mays, Tanner Krebs, D'Shawn Schwartz, Angus Glover, Akech Aliir and Nathan Sobey all proven shooters over their careers, it's easy to see why King isn't panicking.

"I think we're getting good shots and I believe in the guys that are shooting them," King said.

"And again, if we're making them, it's not a game, and if we're shooting the ball like we were last year, we're 4-0 right now, we're 4-0.

"But we're not and that's OK, at some point water will find its level and right now we're a 1-3 basketball team, but we've got 29 games left so let's talk after that."