Subtle Grand Slam boost for Beermen

With five titles in their last eight trips to the finals and the last two coming back-to-back, the San Miguel Beermen now look unstoppable in their bid to nail the PBA’s sixth championship Grand Slam and clinch the third three-conference crown sweep for the San Miguel Corp. franchise since 1975.

The Governors’s Cup, which starts on July 19, will be the last hurdle for the Beermen, whose all-Filipino crew had reasserted their status last March as the best in the league in the last three stagings of the Philippine Cup before ending their Commissioner’s Cup title drought since 2000 at the expense of the TNT KaTropa last week.

The Beermen captured a record 24th title for the SMC franchise with an emphatic 4-2 win over the KaTropa in the best-of-seven finals. Chris Ross was named Best Player of the Conference and Charles Rhodes was honored as Best Import to further highlight SMB’s dominance.

With imports’ height limited to 6-foot-5 in the Governors’ Cup, the Beermen will have a huge built-in edge in having the 6-10 June Mar Fajardo. But proven team strength and desire will not be the key to the Slam.

The crucial push will come from Barangay Ginebra and Star, which this corner believes will do everything, albeit subtly, to clear the way for an unimpeded Grand Slam march by their sister team SMB.

Whether the league likes it or not, SMB, Ginebra and Star are expected to prove that corporate blood is thicker than honest-to-goodness competition, especially on this occasion where one is close to PBA glory.

All three are again expected to reach the semifinals and when that happens, it’s a foregone conclusion that the Beermen will end up in the finals again. Although SMB and Ginebra played according to their merits in the Philippine Cup finals, it won’t be a cutthroat encounter if they end up clashing anew for the Governors’ Cup title that Ginebra won last year over Meralco. And the result will be predictable.

Wendell McKines, who played for Alaska in 2013 and TNT in 2015, is returning as import reinforcement for SMB.

For sure, TNT will again be a force to reckon with in the Governors’ Cup. The KaTropa also gave the Beermen a big scare in the Philippine Cup semifinals before SMB prevailed in the last two games of the best-of-seven series to reach the finals.

But the way things are now, they have to get past either the Gin Kings or the Hotshots to get another crack at the Beermen.

The SMC franchise achieved its first Slam in 1989 after Crispa’s romp in 1976 and 1983. Alaska’s title sweep came in 1996 through coach Tim Cone, who delivered another Slam for SMC through the San Mig Coffee squad in 2014.