Tough-minded Hawks guard Gary Ervin's take-charge performance against Adelaide on Thursday night buried any doubts about his ability to bounce back from failure.

Ervin did his best to light a fire under the Hawks, scoring 29 points in the 94-73 loss at Adelaide Arena.

Only four nights earlier the 180cm New Yorker made an uncharacteristic error in the dying seconds against Cairns and Wollongong lost by two.

Ervin said before the game against Adelaide that the crunch-time turnover against the Taipans wouldn't prompt him to start second-guessing himself.

He backed up those words with an aggressive performance against the team that axed him at the end of last season.

"Gary made a lot of big plays against Cairns to put us into a position to win and we wouldn't have been in that situation without him," Hawks forward Tim Coenraad said.

"It doesn't come down to one play of the game, but if we had that play again I'd still put the ball in his hands. We're behind him 100 per cent. He's the guy we want to have the ball in that situation."

As much as Ervin would've savoured his impressive shooting display against his former Sixers teammates, the 31-year-old would've preferred a win.

"We're lucky in a way that Gary did get it going and carry us, [but] we're not going to win games if that happens," Wollongong coach Gordie McLeod said.

"Our defence wasn't good enough and our offence wasn't good enough."

Despite being without forward Mitch Creek, the Sixers overcame a sluggish start to lead by three at half-time before erupting with 20 unanswered points to start the third period.

"We lacked awareness in our defence in terms of who they were going to, and offensively we weren't getting through things," Wollongong captain Oscar Forman said.

"At the start of the game we were doing really well. We got through stuff, we got the ball into Luke [Nevill], Gary was firing, and even our broken plays were OK. But our tempo was horrible and some of our shots didn't drop and the pressure just mounted on us, especially in that 20-0 run they had in the third quarter. We didn't deal well with it."

The Hawks hope to fire on all cylinders when they host New Zealand on Sunday at 2pm.