Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (left) and the Tropang Giga had a hand in the poor shooting of Barangay Ginebra in Game 1. —PBA IMAGES
It’s a credit to how Barangay Ginebra has turned the three-point shot into a weapon that TNT coach Chot Reyes warned his team how a bad shooting night by the Gin Kings is the exception and not the rule.
“They’re an outside shooting team. So they really rely a lot on their three-point shooting,” Reyes said. “There are days they’re going to be off, but that’s not going to be every day and that’s why I told [the players] we have to be prepared for the next game.”
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Barangay Ginebra’s 2-for-21 shooting from three-point land in Game 1 was the worst in a series finale in over a decade. The last time a club fared miserably from beyond the arc was San Mig Coffee during the 2014 Commissioner’s Cup Finals, during a time when hot shooting from the outside would often be dismissed as a rarity.
Curiously, that San Mig squad was also coached by Tim Cone, who steered that team to the title of that conference—the team’s second en route to a rare triple crown sweep.
Unfazed
The Tropang Giga, defending champions of this conference, look to weave the same defensive magic that muzzled the top guns of their fancied foes when the return match gets going at 7:30 p.m. at Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City.
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The Gin Kings, for their part, were already looking primed for a rebound shortly after the 104-88 beatdown fashioned before a record 11,021 crowd at Ynares Center in Antipolo City that Sunday night. RJ Abarrientos, one of Ginebra ‘s starters who struggled in the loss, hardly looked fazed by the series-opening defeat.
“We feel that our intensity is still [intact] for the next game,” said the flamboyant rookie, who accounted for only five points in the loss.
“We just came out flat. Not just me, but the rest of the team,” he added. “It’s simply basketball. There will be a loser and there will be a winner.”
Justin Brownlee, one of the biggest draws of this best-of-seven showdown, was just as resolute, saying this is exactly what Cone warned Ginebra about.
“It’s gonna be not easy and coach Tim explained that to us. From this past week, we’ve been preparing. He told us [we won’t be getting] the same … shots we’re probably used to getting,” he said.
“We just got to work a little bit harder [for them], is all. You also got to give them credit for their defense,” the resident Ginebra import said. “I think the mix of us just missing some good looks. But at the same time, if I’m not mistaken, the stats say TNT is the top defending team in three-pointers. So there’s also no secret why we struggled.”
And Cone, having figured in rodeos like this many times over in the past, was expectedly calm.
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“We weren’t locked in the whole game. They beat us up one-on-one and … really embarrassed our defense. We’ll see what we can do about it,” he said. INQ