Excuses off the table as Tatum demands discipline

Justin Tatum wants his players to give officials fewer reasons to blow the whistle after another significant free throw differential, while refusing to abandon Illawarra’s championship defence despite feeling there are forces working against his team.

The numbers again told the story on Friday night at HoopsFest, as the Hawks fell by five points to the Perth Wildcats at RAC Arena.

Illawarra attempted just 12 free throws across the full 40 minutes, while Perth went to the line 37 times. The Wildcats shot the first nine free throws of the game and added 17 more in the fourth quarter alone.

Despite sitting at 8 and 16 with nine games remaining, Tatum remains confident his group can still make a run, even while believing there are clear obstacles in their way.

"Always (confident of making a run), if there's any statistical way that we can find a way to do, we're going to do it even though we have all the entities to try to shut us down to stop us," Tatum said.

"I'll never stop playing until it's done and it's not the world (against us) ... we're playing basketball the game that we love, it's just at the end of the day a lot of discrepancies that's blatant that people don't want to recognise.

"We don't want to use that as an excuse you know what I mean, we just put the facts out there and if there's a fact about it, I'm going to point it out."

Ultimately, Tatum says, responsibility still sits with his group to find a way to win games.

"But at the end of the day my guys and myself, my group are losing games and we have to find a way to play 40 minutes to get it done," he said.

"Whatever shots are fired or whatever's not consistent on the other end, we can just control what we can and that's shooting better, taking care of the ball, boxing out and having fun doing it."

Tatum also brought the media into the conversation when questioned by a reporter post-match.

"You work for Code Sports? (That's) one of them OK, but at the end of the day it is what it is and I give trust to my guys in our organisation and on my team," Tatum said.

"It's about us, man, and we have fun doing it and we're the champions and we understand we're going to get everybody's best shot and we've gotta do better."

Ultimately, regardless of whether Tatum believes the Hawks are on the wrong end of the whistle, he knows the solution starts with his own group giving referees fewer opportunities to make calls if they want to stop the trend of large foul differentials.

"That's what they do and it is what it is, we're used to it and it's nothing here to sit up here and talk about and complain about, and be a meme about it for the whole week," Tatum said.

"We have to be more foul disciplined and just play through it, and understand that in some quarters they'll go 7-1 or 8-1 on foul situations, and we go from there, but that didn’t really cost us the game.

"Every team goes through it every once in a while and this year is our year, and I'm not going to use it as a scapegoat or excuse."