Never say they’ll die

Barangay Ginebra just added another man to its list of injured players, with Joe Devance out indefinitely because of a stress fracture in his right foot.

“That’s some kind of bad news, because Joe will be out for a few weeks,” said Ginebra coach Tim Cone, whose brilliance of making his role players step up in trying situations has made the Gin Kings stay afloat with a 5-1 card. “We just don’t know how long he will be out.”

But does that make the Gin Kings, who are already without Greg Slaughter, Solomon Mercado and Japeth Aguilar, weaker going into the final five games of their elimination round schedule in the PBA Governors’ Cup?

Yeng Guiao, who will be on the opposite side of the floor Friday night trying to snap Ginebra’s three-game winning streak and enhance NLEX’s chances of progressing in the upper half of the playoff draw, doesn’t think so.

“I’ve been telling my players (leading to this game) that at a time when Ginebra seems most vulnerable, they play their best basketball,” Guiao told the Inquirer a day before the Road Warriors and the Gin Kings were to lock horns in a 7 p.m. contest at Smart Araneta Coliseum.

“The more you think that you have an advantage, the more you will be in trouble,” added Guiao. “They hardly felt their (key players’) absence (in the early part of the conference).”

Slaughter and Mercado will continue to sit it out, but Cone could get some help with Aguilar and Art dela Cruz listed as game time decisions.

Guiao also fingered Justin Brownlee as a main concern in the featured game. Brownlee is coming off a 34-point effort against Phoenix Petroleum on the road last Saturday, and because of Cone’s manpower woes, the two-time Grand Slam winner will obviously ask his import to again do most of the scoring against the Road Warriors.

Meanwhile, Blackwater, whose franchise-best 4-0 start was snapped by the Road Warriors last week, tries to get back on track against a Meralco crew that will be rejoining the conference after bowing out in the semifinals of the Fiba Asia Champions Cup in Thailand.