8 years since PBA title, Simpson’s task to carry Aces ‘more challenging’ now

Alaska seemed to have found a gem back in 2010 when it acquired Diamon Simpson as its import for the PBA Fiesta Cup.

The then 22-year-old Simpson led the Aces to the conference’s championship against San Miguel taking the title in six games.

Eight years have passed, and a more mature 30-year-old Simpson knows replicating his early success in the league would take a lot more as he leads Alaska, once again, against the Beermen.

READ: San Miguel draws first blood against Alaska 

The Beermen have the upper hand this time, taking Game 1 of the five-game semifinals series of the PBA Commissioner’s Cup.

“Winning a championship once before, that’s my expectation, now it’s a little more challenging and teams are a lot more polished,” said Simpson Saturday after their  92-79 loss. “It’s going to be tough.”

“That’s a tough loss for us, we prepared and we worked hard all week and they came out and executed. There’s still a lot of time left and hopefully, we can turn this around.”

READ: Diamon Simpson returns to Alaska, Teng reactivated

Simpson is somewhat familiar with the Beermen as he played against current stars Alex Cabagnot and Arwind Santos.

Cabagnot and Santos, though, are just two players in San Miguel’s machinery that now have four-time MVP June Mar Fajardo, two-time Finals MVP Chris Ross, five-time All-Star Marcio Lassiter, and former New York Knick Renaldo Balkman.

“It’s a good team, further than Balkman and June Mar, there are the guards, the bench, they got a lot,” said Simpson who carried the Aces with 31 points and 24 rebounds.

“You can’t take anything away from them, they played hard and they played great.”