EMERGING VICTORIOUS in a grind-it-out contest against the San Miguel Beermen last Sunday, defending Philippine Basketball Association Commissioner’s Cup champions Barangay Ginebra San Miguel Kings said they are satisfied with the result and that they took some lessons from it which they hope to ride on moving forward in the tournament.
A 110-107 overtime victor, the Kings had to dig deep and relied on a solid effort from its core to outlast the Beermen and improve to a 3-3 card midway into their campaign.
Import Justin Brownlee led Barangay Ginebra’s big win, playing without relief en route to finishing with 39 points, 15 rebounds, five assists and two blocks.
LA Tenorio had 16 points and six assists while Greg Slaughter and Scottie Thompson had 13 markers each and combined for 31 rebounds.
“Well, just two heavyweights going at it and really going at each other and took an extra round to see who could win this one. But I like the game because we played within character, we played within the kind of character that we wanted to play in, I thought we competed well,” said Barangay Ginebra coach Tim Cone following their victory.
The winningest coach in PBA history went on to say that getting the needed support for Mr. Brownlee, especially from their bigs, would go a long way in the midseason tournament where they hope to repeat as champions.
“We know we’re gonna get Justin’s numbers. We know our guards are going to contribute but we just got to be able to grind it out with our bigs… It’s that second, third, fourth effort that you’ll love to see from Greg and Japeth [Aguilar] and I thought we got that tonight,” Mr. Cone said.
The playoff intensity atmosphere of the game should also help his team, Mr. Cone said, as they try to pick things up in the midseason tournament which has started up and down for them.
“It was a great game. I told the guys, I think about 6 minutes to go in the timeout that hey this is a great game, this is a fun game that’s great to be a part of. For us it was playoff intensity because, we were coming off from two losses and they were struggling early, both of us needed this very badly so there really is a lot of playoff intensity on this game. I certainly felt it, our players felt it,” Mr. Cone said.
Barangay Ginebra now hopes to add on the win when it plays the NLEX Road Warriors on June 23 in Batangas City.
By Michael Angelo S. Murillo
Senior Reporter