Was this the Illawarra Hawks best performance under Justin Tatum?  

They may have had better wins, but never more fun than Thursday’s 109-71 dismantling of New Zealand at the Sandpit.

There were storylines aplenty as an explosive start saw the Hawks take a 32-12 quarter-time lead and go on to claim victory and equal the club’s biggest winning margin of the 40-minute era. 

It saw all 13 players on the roster take the floor and 12 get on the sheet, with Kuany Kuany and Luca Yates dropping their first NBL points as Tatum got 52 points from his bench. Todd Blanchfield was the odd man out, but given he has a 36-point game in a Hawks uniform to his name, he’s entitled to a pass. 

A 38-point margin begs the question, were the Hawks that good or the Breakers that bad? As it often does, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but Tatum found it hard to argue when it was put to him that it was his side’s best outing under him as head coach.  

“I believe so,” he said. “It was just a total team effort.” 

“I'm really happy with the practices we had over these last 12 days, and happy that our guys who got to play for their national team got that experience to bring back, that hunger that they gained from that. We just wanted to build off that Sydney game and there were a lot of things that played right for us." 

While much of the pre-game hype was around Breakers skyscraper Tacko Fall – the tallest man to set foot on an NBL floor – it was an emerging big-man in Lachy Olbrich who took command of the contest. 

He finished with 21 points at 8-9 shooting, one of six Hawks in double figures, with the performance one of his most mature as an NBL player. 

“Unbelievable,” Tatum said. “It was like 13-14 minutes, 21 points, three or four rebounds. This is somebody we've been challenging all year to be consistent in the roles and the minutes that he gets. 

“He is one of the top young stars in this league and now he's able to see what he can do. Now we just want to get it consistently out of him, which I know for sure we are, then the sky is the limit for this kid.” 

Skipper takes to PJC task 

Hawks skipper Tyler Harvey’s reputation as a star has been built at the offensive end, but Tatum had enough faith in his on-court general to hand him the defensive task on MVP candidate Parker Jackson-Cartwright.

It’s a task many would have felt custom-made for defensive ace Wani Swaka Lo Buluk, but the DPOY candidate made good use of the surplus energy at the other end of the floor, dropping 10 of his 13 points in the opening term. 

Harvey kept the job on PJC, whose 19 points came at 8-16 from the field and just 1-6 from long range. The long-tenured skipper also had 15 points, five assists, four rebounds and two steals. 

 “We’re very proud of T Raw, (Harvey)” Tatum said. 

“He took that challenge, and we intentionally did that. 

“We wanted T Raw to be on PJC because PJC runs New Zealand. He's their guy and at the end of the day, he's going to get his points no matter what. 

“Our goal was to make sure everybody else felt uncomfortable, so the guys who never felt a Swaka (Lo Buluk) or Davo (Will Hickey), they were going to get that attention today and if PJC does his thing, he does his thing. 

“But Tyler did a great job of staying in front of him and then offensively doing his thing.”  

Peatling sets tone in rare start 

He’s seldom spoken about but there’s no player more highly thought of in Hawks camp that blue-collar big-man Mason Peatling.   

That extends to coach Tatum, who never misses an opportunity to sing the 27-year-old’s praises. It’s not just lip service, with Peatling pitched into the fray at tip-off on Thursday.

Peatling had two blocks on the one play to set an early defensive tone and complemented his lone bucket – a put-back offensive board – with six more rebounds and an assist in a season-high 16.50 on the floor.  

It saw Darius Days start from the bench for the first time this season and match his season average of 11 points and seven rebounds.  

While replacing All-NBL First Team star Gary Clark in the four spot was always going to be a tall order, in Olbrich, Days and Peatling, Tatum could be finding an accumulative solution. 

“It was an experiment that we were really talking about doing some time during the season, but we wanted to wait until after FIBA to see if it benefited us,” Tatum said. 

“Mason is a low demand, high reward type of guy. He’s a great communicator, he's a leader and he's experienced. He started in Melbourne and won a championship with them, so he has that experience. 

“What Mason did was huge. It was the screens, it was communicating, it was the switching late, getting on guys at certain times. 

“Darius coming off the bench, he’s much more free-minded to score the ball and less worried about foul trouble or defensive matchups and stuff like that, so we try to get the best out of everybody to make the best for this team.”  

The Hawks are next in action on Saturday when they take on South East Melbourne on the road, the first of a three-game away stretch before returning to Wollongong for a December 22 clash with Perth.