Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
Tim Cone has been in the Philippine Basketball Association for more than two decades that one would think nothing could surprise him anymore.
Most of all, the team he’s handling for just the third conference, a Barangay Ginebra crew whose 7-foot franchise player is watching from the sidelines, whose core is one of the oldest in the league and in a season where he abandoned the system that gave him all of his greatest successes in his PBA career: the Triangle Offense.
“Yeah, a little bit,” Cone told the Inquirer when asked if he was surprised that Ginebra has come within a win of nailing the Governors’ Cup and ending an eight-year wait in barely his first full season with the Gin Kings.
“I deal with the day-to-day process—how they defend, stay together and develop chemistry—and to me, it takes a while [to realize success].
“I think it really comes down to working hard enough and well enough,” he went on. “And in doing that, the championship comes.”
Greg Slaughter has literally been the team’s biggest spectator from ringside in all but one game of the conference, but Cone has gotten a huge lift from two former cornerstone guards who ain’t that fast and furious anymore but are rising to the challenge.
Jayjay Helterbrand and Mark Caguioa, all-time greats who are a combined 76 years old and have two MVPs between them, have been keys in the last two Ginebra victories that gave the Gin Kings a 3-2 lead.
And it would be safe to say that this tandem’s undying throng will celebrate their heroics if the Gin Kings do go all the way, starting with the first of two shots they have of wrapping it up at 7 p.m. tomorrow at Smart Araneta Coliseum.
But what is most unexpected of this Ginebra run is that Cone could pull it all out—his 19th championship in the league—after departing from the Triangle Offense, which he embraced like a religion in two previous teams he handled in his first quarter-of-a-century coaching.
Proof of how good the Triangle has been to him was that he won 13 championships with Alaska, including a Grand Slam in 1996.
When he transferred to the Purefoods/Star/San Mig Coffee franchise, he won in just his second conference before completing the league’s fifth Triple Crown sweep in 2014.
“Yeah, I am surprised [that it hasn’t been the Triangle],” Cone said. “It’s been fun doing something different after 25 years, but the guys have sunk their teeth in right away and really enjoyed it (new system) right away.
“We had some early success with it and stuck with it,” he said. “No, I don’t have a name for it yet.”
Cone insists that they’re not doing anything that special as far as his new offensive set is concerned. But it has been getting the job done, that’s what’s most important.
“I don’t know if it’s anything unique, if it is, we will try to find a name for it,” he said.
It could turn out to be the most popular one, though, that it would be acceptable whatever the name turns out to be.