Game 1 heroes Justin Brownlee and RJ Abarrientos during Game 1 of the 2026 PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals between Barangay Ginebra Gin Kings and TNT Tropang 5G. –MARLO CUETO/INQUIRER.net
Many see a different RJ Abarrientos in his return to the PBA Finals—a huge contrast from his two previous trips, when he was a rookie who often kept second-guessing things.
This time, Abarrientos looks more like a confident and secure sophomore who has emerged as arguably the team’s main man and, without doubt, one of the best in his position in the league.
Abarrientos finished with 24 points and seven rebounds to help the Gin Kings to a 102-100 victory over TNT on Wednesday in Game 1 of the PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals at Smart Araneta Coliseum.
But even he had a mature outlook on his late-game heroics, where he knocked down two huge four-point shots that paved the way for Justin Brownlee’s game-winner.
“Those two four-point shots that I made are not sustainable, so we need to be better,” Abarrientos said, while also admitting that he has a lot of things to tidy up if he and his teammates want to double their series edge in Game 2 on Friday.
On top of those things is his defense.
“Coach Tim (Cone) got mad at me,” Abarrientos said, noting how TNT erased an 18-point Ginebra lead and even went ahead courtesy of Rey Nambatac, the Finals Most Valuable Player from last season’s Commissioner’s Cup Finals.
“My defense against Nambatac, especially in this Finals, is unacceptable. So I need to be better and I have to embrace that,” Abarrientos said.
Abarrientos hit two four-pointers late—the first gave Ginebra a one-point lead and the second put the Kings ahead, 100-97, with 20 seconds remaining.
“He hit some huge shots, we were down both times and got the leads on both shots, which were gigantic,” Cone said.
The Tropang 5G again tied the game courtesy of a Roger Pogoy triple but Brownlee secured the win for the Gin Kings, hitting a jumper with six-tenths of a second remaining.
The midseason conference has become Abarrientos’ breakout campaign, one where the team and its faithful legion watched him knocking down big shot after big shot from Ginebra’s opening assignment all the way through the hard-fought semifinal series with Rain or Shine.
He is the league’s top local scorer at 21.4 points per game, hitting 49-percent of his shots, on top of 3.7 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 1.3 steals through 19 games of the second conference.
His rise in the ongoing conference has also made Abarrientos the front-runner for the Best Player of the Conference award, which could only be a mere formality given that other candidates from the early part of the tournament, NLEX’s Robert Bolick and San Miguel Beer’s June Mar Fajardo, were eliminated in the quarterfinals.