Nash Racela rues poor finish in TNT loss to Phoenix

TNT head coach Nash Racela cited his team’s poor endgame execution as the major reason for its heartbreaking loss to Phoenix on Wednesday night.

The KaTropa were up by three with less than two minutes to go but were unable to protect their lead after going 0-of-3 from the field and failing to make defensive stops to finish the game.

“We talked about execution in the end. On both ends, specifically on defense, we weren’t able to execute in the end,” said Racela after giving his players a long post-game talk inside the Mall of Asia Arena dugout following a 74-72 defeat.

“I was asking them what went wrong. I just wanted to hear it from them. We showed them the clips of the last two possessions of Phoenix.”

Racela was pertaining to the instances where the Fuel Masters’ tied the game on a 3-pointer by Matthew Wright with 44.1 ticks left and got the lead for good after a baseline bucket by Doug Kramer with exactly three seconds remaining.

With the loss, the KaTropa dropped to 4-4, tied with the Fuel Masters in fifth place. Racela, however, doesn’t seem worried with his team’s current position.

“If you study our conferences last year, we were always in the middle of the pack, and we just made a good push toward the playoffs and in the playoffs, so it’s still the same plan,” he said.

“Hopefully with what we have now, we can still have a good run towards the playoffs. It will be a tough last three games for us, especially with Gilas coming up. I think we’re going to miss the three guys in at least one game, so it would’ve been nicer if we won today.”