Watch: Illawarra Hawks coach Justin Tatum speaking with Mercury sport journalist Agron Latifi after the team's training session at the Snakepit.
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00:00It kicked in when I got home, but it was basically an honor, a testament to my team and my assistant
00:15coaches how they helped me get to where I was at.
00:18I really wouldn't be in the Coaches of the Year conversation if my team did not really
00:23believe in our message and our techniques.
00:26When I got home and seeing how heavy it was and seeing my name on it, it kicked me.
00:31I'm like, man, I'm making a difference with this group.
00:48I had no idea, no clue, man.
00:50I was just going to coach Little League in high school and never knew where it was going
00:55to take me, but my passion and my understanding of the game grew.
00:58Then opportunities started coming along and my wisdom came along late last year.
01:05I took advantage of it.
01:07I said, hey, I need to battle myself a little bit and see how it goes.
01:10I didn't know I was going to be consulting to an assistant coach, to a head coach and
01:14all in six weeks, but I was prepared for it.
01:17I've been coaching for 17 years and I've played basketball more than half my life.
01:22When a guy puts something in front of you, you take advantage of the opportunity.
01:25That's what you do.
01:33Yeah, a ton of motivation.
01:34A ton of motivation to see the staff, himself and his team enjoy that, the city.
01:38Knowing how close we were the year before and knowing returning to pretty much everybody
01:42on our team, that was a tough layer that we can do.
01:45I have to say, I feel the same way.
01:47Learning a lot of things from the walk and run, I was able to implement a lot of those
01:51things in my technique.
02:03It's definitely not great, but the management part is something that we thrive off of.
02:07We want to make our practice interesting.
02:09We want to keep it competitive.
02:10You'll see we'll switch gyms here and there.
02:12We're working on two-a-days.
02:14We want to take advantage as much as we can, but also we want to make sure that everybody
02:17is recovering.
02:19We're just going to be in the gym.
02:20There's going to be some heat sensors, some conditioning things.
02:23We have a good mixture of things.
02:25We also do a lot of team bonding.
02:27We have three weeks of time because we want to play, but we have that one time in mind
02:31and fix what we need to do to help us in our practice.
02:44Whoever's playing their best ball by then, because we don't want no excuses.
02:48We don't want to say, hey, this team is missing that person or they weren't on the fun speed.
02:52We want to play their best ball by the time it's here.
02:54That's what we want to challenge us and hopefully that we can match their intention and win games.
03:07Working on him next week, he has done probably about 40% of the practice.
03:10It's just some things that we don't involve in there just because we don't want anything
03:14to reoccur too soon.
03:16So we'll just take another week of precautionary to probably put a bit of everything next week.
03:19But he's breaking that frame back.
03:21He's feeling 100% healthy and he's pushing himself.
03:24So it's good to see the majority of my guys back.
03:37Yeah, you expect a lot when you win.
03:40But the support that I've been getting around the city has been unbelievable.
03:43I know that this is the team that's been in the contest for 45 plus years.
03:48So that's saying a lot about the community and the support.
03:51Now they just want to back something and winning helps.
03:54And so I'm happy to be a part of it.
03:56I'm hoping to extend it as much as long as I can.
04:06Yeah, it always been.
04:07We kind of have a little motto.
04:09This is our regular season.
04:12Our preseason, which was our regular season.
04:14So we had 29 games prepared for this regular season to run.
04:18So we have five games to focus on to win.
04:20And all those things that we accomplished in that 29 games, we throw right out the window.
04:25So we're just like we're evil when everybody else is evil.
04:29Just kick ass.
04:32My man, appreciate it.