Kell takes out the "trash" in starring role

The way Trey Kell III ended last season at the Adelaide 36ers didn’t sit well with him, before that was magnified with what he described a trash start to NBL25. So it's no surprise the star guard was as relieved as anyone to play a starring role for the Illawarra Hawks on Friday night.

Kell was playing his first home game with the Hawks at WIN Entertainment Centre after previous stints in the NBL at the South East Melbourne Phoenix and in Adelaide, and he was a man on a mission.

Once Kell was moved into the point guard role in the second half of NBL24 at the 36ers, he starred, averaging 20.7 points, 7.6 rebounds and 4.7 assists in a 10-game stretch, but his last appearance had somewhat haunted him.

Holding himself to high standards, he wasn’t happy how he played in the February 9 loss to the Brisbane Bullets, before missing the last game to New Zealand through injury.

The 30-year-old then wasn’t happy with how he played in last Saturday's 27-point win for the Hawks in Perth against the Cairns Taipans, his first for his new club, even though from the outside he appeared to play a solid role with 9 points, 4 and 4 assists.

That had him highly motivated to show his new home fans in Wollongong what he was capable of on Friday night.

He torched the Bullets for 16 points in the first quarter, on his way to 30 for the game, with 4 boards and 3 assists on 11/20 shooting from the field and 7/8 at the free-throw line.

Kell might have been hard on himself for his past two NBL appearances, but was happy to contribute so well to the 113-101 win.

"(It meant) that I'm not as trash I was the first game," Kell said.

"It's a couple of things, I'm glad we won the game, but obviously for me personally I felt like I played pretty bad the first game and thinking back to last year, the last game I played with Adelaide I think I had a stinker against Brisbane too.

"So it was those things coming in and a big shoutout to JT (Justin Tatum) as well throughout the whole week just telling me to stay aggressive and not press too much. He knows what I'm capable of and that helped a lot as well."

Tatum recruited him for a reason, because he wanted a bigger-bodied point guard who could get to the foul line, who could equally create for his teammates and score, and also be a strong defender and physical presence.

He didn’t think Kell was as bad first up against Cairns as the man himself, and couldn’t be happier he signed him as one of just two new faces to this team in NBL25 along with Darius Days.

"When I got a chance to start recruiting Trey, he was the only person that I was really high on to be a part of this team," Tatum said.

"He has so many intangibles and one of the things we were missing was getting to the free-throw line and he does that very well.

"Then there's all the other capabilities he has with scoring the ball and being a great defender, and not just on the perimeter but in the post as well.

"He'll get ticked off if I call a double if he's caught guarding down on the post so he has that competitive nature, and I knew he was going to get going.

"I wasn’t worried about the Blitz or the first game, I know what he's capable of and just to have him on our side instead of playing against him is a plus for us."

The Hawks are now a team trying to push the pace and score in as many ways as possible, as evidenced by putting up 215 points in the first 80 minutes of the season.

That included blowing away the Snakes last Saturday in Perth with 44 points to 19 over the last 15 minutes and then they put 38 points on the Bullets in the first quarter on Friday.

Tatum had a real sense that a potent offensive team was what he would be leading by what he was seeing at practice leading into NBL25.

"I had a vision of it because we couldn’t stop each other in practice," he said.

"I was like we are either playing really bad defence or all of us can really score the ball. Seeing a couple of games now against other teams, I feel that we have a really good high level of scoring of ability with our starting five, and our bench.

"Everybody on our team that you pass to has the potential to score somehow, and as long as we can play unselfish basketball then we know we are going to be playing the right way."

As largely positive as things have been in the first two games for Illawarra, Tatum did see concerns in a second quarter lapse on Friday, where Brisbane put up 35 points to lead by half-time that he knows can't become a trend.

"I think we got content with being up 16 at one time and then we got to a selfish mode for about a couple of minutes," Tatum said.

"I told the guys we allowed about 54 points in 15 minutes, and then only 47 in the last 20 minutes so once we lock in and do what need to do defensively, we could be the best defensive team.

"We don’t need too many lapses like and Brisbane were a little shorthanded, but any other group that has a full roster, if we allow that to happen then the outcome could have been different."

Now Tatum and the Hawks turn their attention to taking on NSW rivals, and fellow unbeaten team after two games, the Sydney Kings at Qudos Bank Arena on Sunday.

"This is a really big test for us to see where we hope to be in the standings or where we rank ourselves within the 10 teams in the league," he said.

"I don’t think we see ourselves as the underdog anymore. We've always been disrespected and people will always come in and say they are going to run over Illawarra, but we've changed those minds last year and definitely the beginning of this season."

While there's a lot of attention on this season's return of Kings captain and former league MVP Xavier Cooks, Tatum is backing his power forward pair of Darius Days and Lachlan Olbrich to test him.

"I've never seen him play before in my life besides in the league," Tatum said.

"He's a really talented young man and at the end of the day when they throw the ball up on Sunday at 2:30, he's going to have to guard Darius and Lachie, and see if he's going to be able to do his job as well."