Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.NET
It all started when Barangay Ginebra, then preparing for the PBA Governors’ Cup with a tried and tested import, lost that man just one game into the tournament to a hand injury so gruesome it was almost indescribable.
Boy, how that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
In front of a diverse crowd of close to 23,000, Justin Brownlee, a replacement for original pick Paul Harris, drained the three-pointer that reverberated all over the country and gave the Kings a 91-88 victory over the Meralco Bolts for the season-ending title last night.
That shot officially ended Ginebra’s eight-year wait to become champions again, and the Kings couldn’t have done it without one of the humblest, most soft-spoken imports to ever lace up a pair of sneakers in this league—one who turned into practically a national hero at Smart Araneta Coliseum.
Robert Jaworski, the legendary and charismatic guard who made Ginebra the never-say-die team that it is today, didn’t only watch from ringside, but went to his former team’s dugout at halftime and wove his magic just by his presence and some words of encouragement.
And the loyal throng that makes the Kings the country’s most loved squad watched as Ginebra rallied from double-digit deficits to close out this best-of-seven series, 4-2, against a Bolts side that refused to yield until the final buzzer.
Brownlee hit 22 of his 31 points in the final two periods, including the last five Ginebra points inside the last 27.3 seconds that rocked the jampacked Big Dome without letup.
LA Tenorio fired 25 points and led Ginebra’s comeback from 15 points down in the first half. He went on to win Finals MVP honors from the PBA Press Corps.
“He (Jaworski) came (to the locker room at halftime) and was very calm and friendly,” Ginebra coach Tim Cone said, just minutes after winning his 19th championship and upping the all-time mark. “I was surprised. And he told us that we were playing tentative, not playing our game.
“He made everyone relax,” Cone went on. “The tenseness in the whole room just went out the window. It gave me goose bumps.”
Tenorio scored 14 points in the third quarter and had seven in the fourth to fuel the Ginebra run.
“LA just chomped it out,” said Cone, who won a title with Tenorio and the Alaska Aces in 2010.
Rookie of the Year Chris Newsome had 19 points for the Bolts, whose import, Allen Durham, was starved to just 15 and missed an open layup that would have shattered an 88-all count.
Instead, it gave Ginebra possession with 5.5 seconds to go and the stage for Brownlee to come up with the game winner and be—even if he was just the second choice of the Kings—the most popular team’s messiah.
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