Marcial, board in key meet to decide fate of Govs’ Cup

PBA commissioner Willie Marcial. PBA IMAGES

The stoppage of the Philippine Basketball Association’s (PBA) season-ending Governors’ Cup is about to enter its fourth week and what the league’s leadership will do to salvage what is left of its conference will get some sort of answer on Monday afternoon.

Commissioner Willie Marcial and the league’s board led by chair Ricky Vargas will have a very important meeting to discuss what they will do with the rest of the import-spiced conference, shelved since its scheduled resumption after the holidays because of an uptick in new COVID-19 cases in the National Capital Region.

A total of 26 matches have been played since the conference opened on Dec. 8 last year, and Marcial assures that the league is hell-bent to consider every option, which includes—if push comes to shove—sending the imports home and finishing the conference all-Filipino, or scrubbing the tournament altogether.

The Games and Amusements Board (GAB), the regulatory body for professional sports, has given the league some ray of hope—albeit an expensive one—by giving the PBA the green light to go on under a home-venue-home setup. It is a privilege accorded to the league as Metro Manila remains under alert level 3 at least up until the end of the month.

“I think just like me, the Governors are [raring] to go. We’ll just clarify the government side of things. GAB has given us a go signal to hold scrimmages, but then again it all depends on what the local government says,” Marcial said on Sunday. INQ