The Tropang Giga are again expected to gang up on June Mar Fajardo (center) like they did in an elimination round loss to the Beermen. —PBA IMAGES
The race for the PBA’s new Philippine Cup champion is now down to the league’s four finest clubs belonging to two of the country’s largest corporate blocs, and each one is bringing a lot of promise into the semifinals which begins Sunday at Don Honorio Ventura State University gym in Bacolor, Pampanga.
San Miguel is looking to reclaim its lofty perch in the centerpiece tournament after an early playoff exit last year, and coach Leo Austria is looking to throw the full weight of its souped-up—and fully healthy—roster to ensure that the Beermen don’t miss their target.
Standing in their way, however, is a top-seeded TNT squad that has been playing spectacularly behind the returning Chot Reyes, the basketball mind that helped turn the franchise into a dynasty right before San Miguel’s five-year stranglehold of the all-Filipino showcase.
“We’re playing the deepest, most talented team in the league,” Reyes told the Inquirer on the eve of the contest slated at 4:35 p.m.
“It will take our best to even have a chance,” he added as the Tropang Giga have it in their minds that the only blemish on their elimination round record came from the hands of the Beermen, 83-67, which snapped what was then a seven-game TNT streak.
‘Totally different’
It’s not like that TNT is the overwhelming underdog, as Austria said in a previous interview, the Tropang Giga, last year’s bridesmaids, have been “on a roll” and “playing organized basketball.”
And that’s massively due to the chemistry between its old and new stars, including rookie Mikey Williams, one of the front-runners for the Best Player of the Conference award.
“We’ve had the opportunity to beat them in the eliminations,” said Austria. “That gives us confidence. But this is the semifinals. This is a best-of-seven. It’s a totally different story.”
Their corporate ties aside, Meralco seems to have taken up sister team TNT’s cautious yet optimistic outlook in its clash against Magnolia, with that series starting at 2 p.m.
“They have (Ian) Sangalang in the middle … You’ve got Calvin (Abueva) out there. They’ve got Paul Lee, too. So it’s going to be very, very difficult for us in the series. But at the same time, I think we’ll be very, very competitive and of course, we will be out to win,” said Bolts coach Norman Black.
Magnolia is a corporate sibling of San Miguel and having sister squads clashing for the title doesn’t seem to be a remote possibility for both conglomerates.
An interesting sidelight in the San Miguel-TNT clash is how the Beermen will perform once again with six-time Most Valuable Player June Mar Fajardo back in the fold after being out of action the whole of last year with a broken shin.
That’s because the San Miguel game will be anchored on the 6-foot-11 behemoth and the TNT defense will obviously be focused on Fajardo until the series ends.
Highly-charged Bolts
San Miguel also boasts of the league’s most fearsome backcourt rotation made up of scoring champions CJ Perez and Terrence Romeo plus the ever-clutch Alex Cabagnot and defensive whiz Chris Ross.
There’s no shortage of fireworks over at the other semifinal pairing either, with Magnolia and Meralco also flaunting top-notch offense.
The Hotshots, the PBA’s perennial defensive juggernauts, are looking more and more an offensively assertive crew behind the do-it-all Abueva, Lee and a resurgent Jio Jalalon.
Meralco, on the other hand, has improved so much through the years that its offense is now the third-best in the league. And that should come in handy in the Bolts’ quest to carve out a winning tradition in the very conference where they have notoriously struggled in the past.