MANILA, Philippines—After using the second overall pick on Ian Sangalang, San Mig Coffee wasn’t quite sure on who to select at No.10.
And the choice came down to either University of Santo Tomas’ explosive guard Jeric Teng or Ateneo’s sweet-shooting big man Justin Chua.
“We almost picked Jeric Teng with that number 10 pick,” Mixers head coach Tim Cone revealed to INQUIRER.net Sunday night after the 2013 Rookie Draft proceedings. “And we really battled over back and forth…do we want a wing or do we want a big man, and we just felt that at the last minute we wanted a big man so we went with Justin Chua.”
“We wanted two big guys. Rafi (Reavis) is 36 going 37, Yancy (de Ocampo) is 34 going 35 and we wanted to have a couple bigs that we can plan on in the future,” said Cone.
Cone said he was surprised that Teng, who eventually got drafted early in the second round by Rain or Shine as the 12th overall pick, was still available that late in the first round.
But Cone was also shocked that the six-foot-four Chua had not been drafted yet.
“He (Chua) is a big man and he can shoot it and that’s rare. The guy came into our draft camp and was just lights out, he couldn’t miss a shot,” Cone said.
“He really impressed our coaching staff so we feel fortunate in getting him at number 10; we felt he was going earlier. We heard he was going to go five or six so we were surprised that he went 10.”