Painters, Mixers eye crucial series lead

RAIN OR SHINE swingman Gabe Norwood soars to the hoop after slicing through the heart of the San Mig Coffee defense. AUGUST DELA CRUZ

RAIN OR Shine and San Mig Coffee try to put one hand on the PBA Governors’ Cup championship today when they break a 1-1 tie in their best-of-five title series that has seen nothing but great action on the court and a lot of drama off of it.

Game time is 5 p.m. at Smart Araneta Coliseum with no team given an edge considering how the first two games of the series went.

The Mixers, who are seeking to complete a rare Triple Crown sweep, won the series-opener in a controversial manner, 104-101, before the Elasto Painters, starring Arizona Reid, sewed things up with an 89-87 overtime win on Thursday night.

Rain or Shine did a remarkable job of putting a lot of distractions—the Draft lottery brouhaha and the blatant noncall in the dying seconds of Game 1—behind to level the series, and the Painters will come into the game with loads of confidence.

Paul Lee, though, will be less than 100 percent because of a swollen left ankle, which he twisted while going for a long rebound in the final 1:20 of Game 2 when his foot got entangled with Marqus Blakely’s going down.

The former Rookie of the Year did not attend practice yesterday so as not to aggravate his injury.  With Lee hurting, it will also make life a lot easier for San Mig’s Mark Barroca who was on the verge of dominating the fourth quarter of Game 2 before Lee slowed him down somewhat.

Meanwhile, the season MVP as well as other individual citations will be handed down starting at 3:30 p.m. during the Annual Leo Awards, the proceedings named after the late great founding league commissioner, Leopoldo Prieto.

June Mar Fajardo, the 6-foot-10 San Miguel Beer cornerstone, is the hot favorite to win his first MVP trophy. Other candidates are Air21’s Asi Taulava and Talk ‘N Text teammates Jason Castro and Ranidel de Ocampo.

Aside from Reid being a defensive concern of San Mig coach Tim Cone, the fiery mentor also expressed displeasure at the way his Mixers executed what would have been the game-tying play in the last 6.7 seconds of overtime.

It has been a chess match, to say the least, between Cone and Yeng Guiao of Rain or Shine, and both know how important this match is, the series being down to a best-of-three.

Reid scorched the Mixers with 27 points in the final two quarters and in overtime, capping an explosive night with that triple that caught defensive ace Marc Pingris totally flat-footed.

Gabe Norwood is also coming off a bad ankle sprain but has been holding his own against Blakely, and Jeff Chan has played quite respectably despite being in a shooting slump practically the whole tournament.

Guiao, on the other hand, would need to find a way to stop James Yap from dominating in the endgame if the Painters are entertaining thoughts of being the spoilers of the Mixers’ Grand Slam bid. Yap has been on fire in these playoffs. On Thursday, the former two-time MVP hit all of San Mig’s seven overtime points.