Cone: Kings left out never-say-die spirit

Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

DESPITE owning one of the tallest, most agile lineups, Barangay Ginebra made a quarterfinal exit for the second time this PBA season, and coach Tim Cone, who has been around long enough to know what he’s talking about, believes that his Gin Kings’ time will come very soon.

“I hate disappointing the Ginebra fans. We didn’t live up to the never-say-die legacy,” Cone said in a text message sent to the media whom he did not talk to after being bundled out—with ease—by Rain or Shine, 102-89, Tuesday night.

“I still feel that in the near future we’ll make them proud,” he went on. “But until then, we need to keep on proving that we deserve the Ginebra fans’ support.”

Ginebra became the sixth team to get the door in the season’s second offering, quite unexpected considering how talented the lineup is and how well the Gin Kings played in the elimination round to become the fourth seeds.

What also came as a complete surprise was the fact that the Kings were swept out of the series by the Elasto Painters, whose import, Pierre Henderson-Niles, isn’t exactly super and whose franchise player, point guard Paul Lee, is still not 100 percent.

“They were great and we were not,” Cone said of the lopsided Game 2 loss, where Ginebra led just once, 4-3, and trailed by as large as 15 points and never got back in the game. “It was the wrong time, obviously, to have an off-night.”

“But that’s the next level for us—learning how to collective play big games in big moments,” Cone, a two-time Grand Slam champion, said. “That game was an incredibly painful lesson for us, me especially.”

Rain or Shine counterpart Yeng Guiao said that he, too, was surprised that the Painters were able to apply the broom on the Kings.

“We were expecting to go the distance with them,” Guiao said after the win.

Cone has had success—a lot of them—wherever he went.

The outspoken mentor completed just the fourth Triple Crown sweep with Alaska in 1996 and won a total of 13 titles with the Aces.

He then transferred—in a controversial manner—to San Mig Coffee/B-Meg/Purefoods at the end of the 2011 season and won a total of five championships, including his second treble in 2013, to become the league’s all-time winningest coach with 18 titles.

Guiao was actually the first one to say what Cone had promised Ginebra’s fans, paying the ultimate respect to his conquered foe.

“Tim Cone is in a class by himself,” Guiao said when reporters tried to highlight their coaching matchup. “I don’t think it was about me and Tim Cone. It was just a hard series for us.”

“He’s been successful with all the teams he’s handled and I am sure he’ll be successful with Ginebra,” Guiao continued. “It’s just a matter of time.”

It was just not this time for the Kings.