PBA Finals a duel between 2 great minds steering 2 great sides

Barangay Ginebra Gin Kings’ coach Tim Cone during a PBA Governors’ Cup game. –PBA IMAGES

Rivals and buddies at the same time, Tim Cone and Chot Reyes will likely have little to no gambits to pull out that the other doesn’t know about in their coaching battle that will serve as one of the subplots in the PBA Governors’ Cup Finals between Barangay Ginebra and TNT.

“I know him, he knows me,” Cone said after his Gin Kings arranged a best-of-seven title duel with Reyes’ Tropang Giga following Sunday’s 102-99 win over the San Miguel Beermen in Game 6 of their semifinal series at Smart Araneta Coliseum

The two will meet for the seventh time on the PBA’s biggest stage, and the first since the 2012 Commissioner’s Cup when Cone and B-Meg (now Magnolia) defeated Reyes’ TNT in a classic Game 7 overtime thriller.

Cone and Reyes, who also worked together under the latter’s stewardship of Gilas Pilipinas in the 2023 Fiba World Cup, will break their 3-3 tie in championship showdowns that many will see as a battle of offensive philosophies.

But Cone, known for his Triangle Offense that he’s modernized over the past decades, has let everyone see through all these years the premium he puts on defense.

Seeing how the Tropang Giga got to the Finals also gives Cone a firm idea on what TNT will be all about starting in Game 1 Sunday at Ynares Center in Antipolo. Cone knows that it’s not Reyes’ offensive-minded Dribble-Drive system alone that may cause problems for Ginebra.

TNT Tropang Giga coach Chot Reyes during the PBA Governors’ Cup. –PBA IMAGES

“He’s done a tremendous job of turning that team into a defensive juggernaut,” Cone said.

That was evident in TNT’s campaign, numbers-wise, allowing the least amount of points with an average of 89.9, and ranked second in field goals given with a percentage of 42.01, a second only to Magnolia (40.0).

Defensive-minded now

TNT also forced opponents to 16.63 turnovers, also second behind NorthPort’s 19.2.

Cone said those aspects had a lot to do with the presence of do-it-all Tropang Giga import Rondae Hollis-Jefferson.

“He’s formed the team around Rondae’s personality and they’ve become a very good defensive team, so hats off to that,” said Cone. “And that is something that we’re really going to have to really battle when we play them.”

Hollis-Jefferson’s workhorse effort will try to counter Justin Brownlee’s penchant of stepping up big in the clutch in another interesting sidelight to see in the title showdown, a rematch of the 2023 Governors’ Cup Finals won by TNT.

It was in that Finals held April 2023 that saw Hollis-Jefferson and the Tropang Giga hand Brownlee his first Finals defeat after going a Michael Jordan-like 6-0 in championship series in the PBA.

It didn’t take long for Brownlee to exact a measure of revenge on Hollis-Jefferson, as six months later, the beloved naturalized import lead the Cone-mentored Gilas Pilipinas crew to the Hangzhou Asian Games gold at the expense of Hollis-Jefferson and Jordan in the final. INQ