Gin Kings, Bolts hope to strike in ‘opening’

Barangay Ginebra import Justin Brownlee. PBA IMAGES

Part of being the winningest coach in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) is also dealing with losses, and Tim Cone has found himself at the receiving end of nearly every kind in a championship series, from the gut-wrenching ones down to just flat-out blowouts.

So Barangay Ginebra’s seasoned mentor knows what exactly the situation is after the team’s series-knotting 99-93 victory in Game 2 of the PBA Governors’ Cup title race late Friday night at Mall of Asia Arena.

“I’ve been in a few Finals appearances where I’ve lost Game 1, that’s for sure. I’ve been in a Finals appearance where I lost all four games. I’ve been swept in the Finals,” Cone said after the game that night.

“Now, the series has narrowed to a best-of-five,” he added. “Game 1 of that best-of-five, which is Game 3, becomes absolutely crucial. And I think [that is the case] for both teams.”

Been there

That “opening” match kicks off on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. at the bayside arena in Pasay City, where the Gin Kings hope to curate lessons from all their championship appearances to make sure they seize control of the series in Game 3.

“One of the things I said at halftime and the end of the game, if Justin [Brownlee] remembers, I said, ‘Guys, you’re a veteran team. You’ve been here before. You know what’s going to happen. I don’t have to tell you everything,’” said Cone.

“[O]ur guys understand the ebbs and flows of a series because they’ve been in a lot of them. And this guy (Justin) especially, he just knows how to step up,” he added.

In Game 2, Brownlee submitted a near triple-double of 35 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists, bouncing back from a relatively tame Game 1 performance.

But more than his scoring, the resident import underscored the importance of playing the same kind of stingy defense right off the jump.

“We got to keep taking care of Allein [Maliksi]. He didn’t hurt us too bad [in Game 2],” he said of the Meralco forward, who scored 22 in the series opener but was held scoreless by the Kings in the next game.

Improved shooting

“[Chris] Newsome, we’ve been kind of playing him pretty well, too, so I think we just need to keep doing what we’re doing but we have to make it even better,” Brownlee added. “We know they’re going to come out hard even better than tonight so we just have to get better at what we’re doing and really just try to stay focused on being fundamentally sound.”

Ginebra was 43.8 percent from the field, a commendable improvement after shooting a laughable 38.3 percent in Game 1.

And for Meralco coach Norman Black, that should serve as a starting point of a laundry list of things they need to fix.

“I thought Ginebra shot the ball really, really well compared to the first game,” he said. “And we just seemed to be a step slower as far as closing out on the shooters and challenging their shots.”

“We did a much better job in the second half but we let them get a lead, which was pretty difficult to come back from,” he added.

“But we did come back, we didn’t give up, we came back, we got it down to three [points], and we had a couple of shots at it,” Black said. INQ