Bullets suffer another blow; United legend prepares for his season debut<\/a><\/p>\nJaVale McGee of the Illawarra Hawks shoots during the round four NBL match between New Zealand Breakers and Illawarra Hawks at Spark Arena, on October 08, 2025, in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Phil Walter\/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Still, Tatum\u2019s frustration wasn\u2019t just directed at the officials. He also challenged McGee to push through the adversity. <\/p>\n
\u201cJaVale\u2019s got to figure it out and play through it as long as he wants to play here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Breakers and Hawks went head-to-head at Spark Arena in a clash between two winless sides desperate to turn their seasons around. The Breakers, who entered at 0\u20134, finally broke through while the defending-champion Hawks slid to 0\u20133.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019m feeling [is that] I wish my team would\u2019ve given a better effort,\u201d Tatum said post-game. \u201cWe need to get back to winning habits and playing a brand that we can be proud of night in, night out.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a turbulent start for the Hawks. Through three games, Tatum has already picked up two technical fouls, key players are sidelined with injuries, and external noise continues to swirl around the roster. But what truly caught the NBL world\u2019s attention were his fiery remarks about the officiating.<\/p>\n
As emotions continue to rise in Wollongong, the spotlight now turns to how McGee and the Hawks respond. Between the injuries, the scrutiny, and the pressure of defending a title, Illawarra\u2019s season is teetering on the edge. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBL championship-winning Illawarra coach Justin Tatum has vented his frustration over the treatment of star Hawks import JaVale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-199099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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