Hawks' trajectory excites new assistant coach Lonergan

The Illawarra Hawks have bolstered their on-court staff thanks to the recent addition of new assistant coach Lachlan Lonergan.

The chance to grow in a more hands-on role, alongside head coach Jacob Jackomas and assistant Shaun Roger - both of who the 26-year-old worked with at the Sydney Comets - attracted Lonergan to the foundation club.

"The Hawks are a great club - their rich history as one of the foundation clubs along with their well-deserved reputation of being hard-working and detail-oriented, made them a very appealing organisation," Lonergan said.

"The opportunity to work with and learn from Jacob, Shaun, and Paul [Mellett] at a professional level, after previously having worked with those guys, was also exciting for me.

"Those factors along with there being a great opportunity for personal growth and development made this the right spot for me."

After helping the Sydney Kings win the NBL22 championship, Lonergan admits there is plenty he can bring to the Wollongong-based club this season.

"I was very lucky to work under and learn from three different head coaches (Chase Buford, Adam Forde and Will Weaver) during my time at the Kings," said Lonergan, who worked heavily in video during his time with Sydney.

"I was fortunate enough to learn three different styles of on-court playing and off-court organisation.

"Each coach had strengths in different areas whether it was teaching details, controlling the group, planning the season, or creating strong processes and culture.

"I hope to try and bring as much of their strengths as I am able to while blending that with my personality and my style of coaching.

"I hope I'll be able to provide a different perspective on how we teach things that may provoke some interesting thoughts and conversations among our coaches."

On top of Illawarra's other three coaches, Lonergan is keen to work alongside the Hawks' exciting core.

"I’m very excited to work with the players on the Hawks roster - there’s some great young local talent in Alex Mudronja, Akoldah Gak, Daniel Grida and of course the two Boomers - Sam Froling and Wani Swaka Lo Buluk," he said.

"Deng Deng adds a strong Australian veteran presence to the team.

"Everyone knows Tyler Harvey is a star and the Hawks have an exceptional reputation of recruiting talented imports and Next Stars, so it will be a very exciting playing group that will be a lot of fun to work with."

After back-to-back semi-final appearances, Lonergan says there's no reason why the Hawks can't go two steps further and claim their second championship banner if they stick to their processes.

"Winning is always the ultimate goal, but I think just creating great processes and trusting and committing to them every day is what will get us there as a team," he said.

"Individually the goals are no different - I’ll build habits that I think will have the most positive influence and commit to those and trust that working hard and getting one per cent better every day will compound and amazing results will come from it."