MANILA, Philippines—The first two games of the PBA Commissioner’s Cup finals ended in polarizing ways.
TNT grabbed Game 1 fairly easily, 109-96, while San Miguel scratched and clawed its way to victory in Game 2, 127-125, after two overtimes and yet there was still a glaring similarity in those two outings with the Beermen pestering KaTropa big man Terrence Jones.
Game 1 saw Jones get into a tussle with Chris Ross that got the players from both teams into a shoving match that resulted to TNT earning a team technical in the process.
Game 2 provided the sequel of the Jones-Ross feud that led to an ejection of the TNT import.
Jones was already called with a technical foul in the third quarter after his squabble with Christian Standhardinger and the second one came in the first overtime with 21 seconds left.
Ross admitted to playing mind games with Jones in Games 1 and 2 but the former NBA veteran shrugged it off, saying the only time the Beermen would get in his head is if they win the championship.
“I don’t really care about any of that,” said Jones, who finished with 28 points, 13 rebounds, seven assists, five steals, and three blocks in 52 minutes of play.
“I’m here to try to win a championship so the only mind game they can play with me is winning four games before I do, I don’t think I’m going to let that happen.”
Jones, however, let his emotions get the better of him and he was sent off in Game 2 after a second motion for smacking Ross in the face that resulted to the San Miguel guard having a busted lower lip.
The 6-foot-9 big man added that there was one more player from San Miguel, who constantly pestered him about his social media posts.
“One of the players kept talking about my Instagram and I was like ‘okay, you follow me on Instagram, that’s cool bro,’” said Jones with a smirk.
Mind games or not, Jones added that for them to recover from the heartbreaking loss in Game 2 they have to prevent San Miguel from hitting its three-pointers.
The KaTropa out-rebounded San Miguel on the offensive glass, 20-14, resulting into 25 second-chance points.
TNT also forced the Beermen to cough the ball up 23 times, turning those miscues to 31 points off turnovers.
San Miguel, however, had the slight edge in long distance shooting with the Beermen hitting 18 of their 32 three-pointers while TNT went 16-of-46 from deep.
“We have to make sure that we take away the three-pointer, like I said in Game 1 I think we did a really good job but today we weren’t as successful,” said Jones. “We just got to focus on that and we can’t control anything else besides how we approach our game plan and how much we succeed in it.”