NLEX revs up

NLEX can’t seem to do anything wrong these days, and coach Yeng Guiao is asking himself the same question the rest of the PBA is asking: “Is this for real?”

With Carlo Lastimosa and Alex Mallari taking turns in hitting the big shots in the stretch on Sunday night, the Road Warriors won a fourth straight game in the Governors’ Cup, a 95-91 decision of Phoenix Petroleum at Smart Araneta Coliseum in Cubao.

And while he appreciates the newfound character of his boys by pulling this close one out of the fire, Guiao also can’t wait to play the elite teams in the coming days so he can see for himself what the Road Warriors are now made of.

“We’ll see if we’re for real or just pretenders,” Guiao said after rising to 4-0 and breaking out of a tie for the lead with idle Meralco again.

“The elite teams are coming up and we’ll see how we fare against them,” Guiao said, referring to Barangay Ginebra, GlobalPort and then San Miguel as his next three foes. “Against Ginebra, we will get a good measure of what kind of a team we really are.”

NLEX has beaten classy teams in this run as the Road Warriors own victories over Alaska and Rain or Shine. It looked, for most of the game against the Fuel Masters, that Phoenix was ready to snap what now stands as a six-game winning streak dating back to the latter part of the Commissioner’s Cup eliminations.

That was until Lastimosa and Mallari bailed them out.

Lastimosa fired 11 of his 14 points in the fourth and Mallari eight, counting a triple that beat the 24-second shot clock with nine ticks remaining and put the game to bed, 93-87.

“This is a really nice win for us, because we’re starting to look as a team,” Guiao said. “Winning games in the endgame, being able to hold our own and pull through in crisis situations, those are good signs for a team trying to put it together.”

Phoenix played with control almost 90 percent of the way only for the Fuel Masters to sputter at crunchtime.

Import Eugene Phelps had 23 points after three periods but was held to the very minimum in the first 10 minutes of the fourth. His final four points came after that Mallari triple and really didn’t matter anymore.

Matthew Wright was the only local in twin digits for Phoenix with 17, even as Aaron Fuller fired 18 points and had 24 rebounds for the Road Warriors, who, this early, could be looking at winning at least three more games for safe passage into the playoffs.

NLEX had missed making it past the eliminations in two conferences this season.