Photo by Tristan Tamayo/ INQUIRER.net
Joshua Smith knows that his hefty size is seen as a defensive liability at times for TNT, so when coach Nash Racela called his number in the final 7.1 seconds of regulation on Friday, even he was surprised.
“It’s weird because in those situations, I’m [usually] out off the floor. The fact that they put me on the ball, I kind of looked at the coach and told him, ‘Are you sure you want me out there?’ I was just trying to be disruptive, use my length,” he said.
With the KaTropa staring at an 89-88 deficit, Smith tried his best to distract inbounder Chris Newsome and take his options out, forcing the Bolts swingman to throw the ball to his foot.
“Once I saw he had no options, he was going for my feet, I tried to move out of the way. It ended working out for us,” he said.
The ball rolled on the court, paving way for Jayson Castro to split the ball and fish for the foul. He ended up splitting his freebies to tie the game at 89 and force overtime.
TNT went on to claim the winner-take-all Game 3, 104-96 to advance to the 2017 PBA Commissioner’s Cup semifinals.
For all of his faults, Smith delivered a monstrous double-double in the victory with 31 points, 27 rebounds, four assists, and two steals, much to the delight of Racela.
“He’s a due for a big game like this. If you’ve noticed from the moment he came in, he has been playing controlled minutes. There were games when he played less than 20 minutes, but slowly, we’ve been stretching that,” the youthful mentor said. “As long as you give him minutes, he will get you numbers. That’s the good thing about Joshua. We just took advantage of what we had.”
Smith, meanwhile, is just making most of the confidence Racela has on him, especially with the high stakes the Game 3 of the quarterfinals had for the KaTropa.
“In do-or-die games, you want to leave it all out there. You don’t want to have any regrets. You don’t want to have turmoil—coulda, shoulda, woulda,” he said. “Today, I wanted to make sure I could score as many points and to try and grab as many rebounds as I can.”
With Meralco out of the way, TNT will now move on and prepare for top-seed Ginebra in the best-of-five semifinals series to start on Sunday.