Josh King doesn’t think the South East Melbourne Phoenix need to make personnel changes, what they need is to flick the switch mentally to lock into what they should be doing defensively if they don't want NBL27 to quickly slip away from them.

What became clearly evident on Thursday night in Brisbane was that the Phoenix are not a challenging to team to execute offensively against and a Bullets team without an import point guard found it far too easy to score 115 points.

Coach King didn’t mince words after the game that if the Phoenix continue to play defence like that, they're not going anywhere this season.

"Scoring 105 points should be enough to win a basketball game but clearly we need to figure some things out defensively," King said.

"That's what we're most concerned and we're not a good team right now, it doesn’t mean I don’t think we can be a good team and I just told our guys in the locker room we're not a good basketball team right now.

"It's my job to figure out how we can become one and that starts with stepping on the floor and believing that you can be, but in this league no one's going to give it to you.

"We have to fix some things obviously with our team."

The Bullets amassed 31 assists for the game and that was only the start of the numbers of concern that jumped off the page afterwards for King to go with conceding 18 offensive rebounds and allowing their opponents to shoot 56 per cent from the field.

South East Melbourne are now 2-5 and giving up 95.4 points a game but most concerningly, 98.6 in their five defeats and now 109.5 in the past two against Melbourne and Brisbane.

King can clearly see what's going wrong at the defensive end, fixing it is a whole other matter, but he does have faith that the current group will turn things around.

"We're going to stick with the guys that are in our locker room, they're here for a reason and we need everyone more from everybody, everybody's gotta step up and you gotta take pride in the defensive side of the ball," King said.

"It's not because we don’t talk about it every day, we want to be a good defensive team but they beat us up the floor tonight and we knew coming in here they play faster than anybody in the league, and then we tried to set our defence in the half court and they beat us off the bounce.

"It's a pride thing and I think we've got guys that can do it, and we have shown in patches this year that we can put together moments where we play together, but it comes down to knowing your assignment and taking pride in your responsibility and your job, and your match up when the game starts.

"We didn’t step on the floor ready to go from the get go and we have to figure some things out, and I'm confident in this group but at some point we have to move forward and get better."

One player that did do what he could defensively was French import Yannis Morin who started in the absence of Jordan Hunter.

However, he only played 15 minutes for the game but did having three of the team's seven blocks and two of their 11 offensive rebounds.

He did what he could to be a rim protector, but what was happening further out is what stood out to King.

"Yannis Moris is a high-level player and I know in this league it's all about y our numbers and stats, but we're talking about a guy that's played in the second-best domestic league after his three seasons in the ACB in Spain," King said.

"He's played high-level games and we're going to continue to stick with him because he can help this team win, and I believe in him.

"You can't put it on Yannis when we're just getting blown by on the ball, we have to be able to contain the ball and we have to be able to stop the ball, and we knew coming into this game that Brisbane play really fast and free.

"We knew they were going to get the ball up the floor quick and we clearly didn’t do a great job of stopping them in transition, or containing them in the half court. It's something we need to figure out."

Phoenix captain Nathan Sobey also had a tough night on return to Brisbane but appeared to be battling a corked thigh through the second half after taking a knock.

He still battled through for 15 points, four rebounds, three assists and three steals, but King wasn’t too sure what the problem was immediately afterwards.

"I don’t know if it was knee or knee or if he's got a cork, I'm not sure," King said.

"I thought they told me knee on knee, but he was definitely sore I can tell you that so we tried to get him back in the game so he didn’t stiffen up, and we'll have to see how he is moving forward."

Things don’t get any easier for the Phoenix now as they return home for another quick turnaround to host the fresh and in-form Cairns Taipans at John Cain Arena on Saturday night as they look to avoid slipping to 2-6 to open NBL27.

"That's how the league goes and no one's going to feel sorry for us, and if we want things to change we have to change first," King said.

"That's myself included and each individual player and that's usually how change happens, you work on yourself and you'll get the results at some point."

Chris Pike

Fixing defence the Phoenix immediate focus