Pogoy driven by goal that has eluded him in PBA: A championship

RR Pogoy (right) was nothing short of devastating for TNT in the first week of the PBA reboot. —PHOTO COURTESY OF PBA IMAGES

CLARK FREEPORT—Roger Pogoy spent the day after TNT’s fourth win hunkered down in his hotel room here—chilling.

He clearly needed the break after playing in four of the past seven days—with the last two off one bad ankle.

“It feels better,” Pogoy said of his ankle during a chat with the Inquirer. “It’s much more manageable now.”

He hardly looked like his ankle needed pain management the night before, scoring 30 points to help TNT scrape past Phoenix in a match between two of the early leaders of the compressed Philippine Cup.

After averaging 23.7 points highlighted by a career-high 45 on reopening night last Oct. 11 against Alaska, and seven rebounds in the first week of action, the 28-year-old find from Cebu was unanimously named the very first PBA Press Corps Player of the Week inside the bubble.

“You know, I’m just glad since this is also the result of the work that we’ve been putting in,” the Gilas Pilipinas mainstay said. “Four wins and we’re enjoying playing at the same time. Then I’m also having great outings—it’s double the joy.”

While he is ecstatic with the early success he and his team are enjoying in this whirlwind tournament, Pogoy is also the first to say that the Tropang Giga still have a long way to go.

“We’re not done yet,” he said. “The season is long and we’re not even at the halfway point yet. So we’ll keep on working.”

Pogoy made it a point to laud his team’s cohesion early on, saying that it also played a big role in him shining thus far.

“I think we have a pretty tight group,” he said, shooting down talk that TNT is a ticking time bomb—because of its stars—that is just waiting to implode.

“There will be ups and downs,” Pogoy said. “It’s not always like this, where it’s full of ups. We know that it is during the downs that we’ll show what this team’s character is made of.”

Add the fact that within this bid is a personal crusade he has been trying to wage for years.

“It’s also a personal goal of mine. I’ve been able to get a taste of championships in other leagues I’ve played, in high school, college and the semiprofessional circuit,” Pogoy said. “It’s just a pro title that I haven’t been able to win.”

And that’s a motivation that can undoubtedly drive anyone to keep working, bad ankle or not. INQ