The Hawks are 2-3 coming out of a COVID-enforced hiatus, having twice blown double-digit leads in comprehensive defeats to Perth at home.

The Hawks have also dropped a tight thriller to Melbourne United, while managing two steadying wins over Sydney and Adelaide in Wollongong.

It leaves them 5-4 on the season and without a win over a top six rival ahead of two road games in four days against the Taipans and Breakers.

Schedule changes will now see the Hawks, initially set to play the Bullets in Brisbane next Saturday, return home to host South East Melbourne on Monday week.

They'll head south for a return clash with the Phoenix three days later before returning to host Tasmania in Wollongong 48 hours later.

The Hawks will need to make the bonus home games count after Goorjian frankly declared his side is "not even close" to title fancies Perth and United.

"You talk about the [overall] strength of the league, but if you said 'who are the best teams in it right now?' It's Perth and Melbourne and I've seen those uniforms a lot lately," Goorjian said.

"When it comes down to the tail end of this year, I think you're going to have to go through [Perth]. Over the course of the 40 minutes the last two games, our match-ups are difficult with them.

"It seemed whether we went small, or we went big, we had a match-up issue there. I think they do a great job of recognising mismatches and going at that.

"We've got some work to do to beat [Perth]. The other games are new challenges. Brisbane, South East, Melbourne, New Zealand, Cairns when they have all their pieces there, there's just nothing easy in this.

"We've got our hands full and we've got to play better than we're playing right now."

While slow starts plagued their early season efforts, Illawarra are developing a habit of surrendering commanding positions with mid-game slumps.

Read more: Law and Cotton shine to sink Illawarra in Wollongong

The see-sawing fortunes are something Goorjian puts down to a lack of cohesion in his top-to-bottom roster.

"I don't think fatigue was a factor. I think the guys are excited about playing and tired of practice so you can't have it both ways," he said.

"If there was one major factor, it's that we've got a lot of different combinations that we can play and we're starting to work that out.

"We've played six or seven games now and still, in the middle of the third quarter and we're down by four, I look at it and we've got a group of five on the floor that have never ever played together.

"We've done a lot of practice but, if you [asked] me one thing that's missing, it's getting guys comfortable with each other on the floor.

"We've got certain groups that are, that starting five knows how to run things and do things together. That process is the most difficult offensively."

Defensively, the issues appear less nuanced, with frailties without the ball a stark contrast to their finals run last season that was built on elite defence.

"Defensively we've just got a group of guys where [defence] is not their strength and it's something we've really got to work at," Goorjian said.

"You look at these guys and [ask] what's their number one thing? 'This guy shoots the three, this guy's good off the bounce, this guy's good off the on-ball'.

"A Justin Simon last year, his number one thing was defence. There's a process now in making these guys as group cohesive and better defensively.

"That's a long-term process we have to keep chipping away at.

"I know [we conceded] 94 points, but I do think we made some headway defensively and we'll see [if that's the case] in these next couple of games."