Elite Christmas?

Blackwater coach Leo Isaac has never had it this good in three years calling the shots for the Elite.

And with Christmas just around the corner, Isaac wants to have a holiday celebration he and his boys have never enjoyed since entering the Philippine Basketball Association.

“We are very eager to play and win our next two games,” Isaac told the Inquirer yesterday after ending preparations for his Elite’s clash with GlobalPort and Terrence Romeo in the Philippine Cup eliminations. “Our motivation is to have a great Christmas celebration for a change.”

In the franchise’s best start at 3-2, Blackwater will be colliding with the Batang Pier in the

7 p.m. game at Fil-Oil Flying V Arena in San Juan and will be looking for two straight wins that would enable them to end the year in the top two of the standings.

After being the league’s favorite whipping boys in their first two seasons, Isaac confessed of having sad Christmases the last two years.

“This will be the first time that this will happen to the Blackwater franchise,” he said at the prospect of ending Christmas with a 5-2 card and solo second. “We know that this is a rare situation for us. The players know what’s at stake and they know that they have to work hard for it.”

The Elite, whose newfound success can be attributed to the acquisition of Mac Belo as the first overall Draft pick, will be facing lowly Mahindra on Sunday at Philippine Arena in Bocaue, Bulacan.

First up, though, will be GlobalPort, a very dangerous team that Isaac knows is being fueled by Romeo, whom he described as “super sharp” coming into this game.

“Sobrang talas niya ngayon (He’s really sharp nowadays),” Isaac said of Romeo, the former scoring champion whom management backed up with a lot of help in frenzied off-season wheeling and dealing that got them Nino Canaleta, Mick Pennisi, Aaron Aban and JR Quiñahan.

GlobalPort coach Franz Pumaren also knows— like the other mentors in the field—that this is far from the old Blackwater team that was a walk in the park in the past.

“We will be playing a vastly improved team,” Pumaren said. “It’s very important for us to have a good start and also hold them down (offensively).”

It is actually this GlobalPort team that Blackwater will be trying to dislodge in second spot when the holiday celebrations start. With a 3-1 card, the Batang Pier are just half-a-game behind idle pacesetting defending champion San Miguel Beer’s 4-1 record.

And it won’t only be Romeo that will be Isaac’s defensive concern, with Stanley Pringle also capable of dropping monster numbers on any give night.

Belo, meanwhile, has been held down to the minimum in the last two Blackwater games, where the Elite went 1-1 and are 1-2 in the last three.

Isaac shrugs this off to be normal.

“There are really nights that someone really doesn’t play that great,” he said. “But this boy is not showing any letup in his preparations. He wants to bounce back, and this game (against GlobalPort) could be the game he does that.”

After averaging 23 points in his first three games, Belo turned in a combined 22 in the last two.