JUST before we start this semifinal craze in the current PBA Commissioner's Cup... JUST before I start my separate story of "Whatever happened to the Sportscast Engineer that he stopped giving weekly sporting insights?"... and JUST before we go on our trip to Boracay... it's high time to say all the things that I have witnessed, observed, and made up during office drinking sessions and put it in a multiple part mega-post. You shall not worry! Fine tuning is the only thing I need before putting up the other semis pairing, the rest of the PBA teams, and other sporting teams that exist in the country.
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Being a Sportscast Engineer is easy. All you need is a regular day job as an engineer, a regular gig as a sportscaster, and talent in time management. I have the first one and the third one right now. So to keep up, writing has always been the fallback. Bad news is I don't have the incredible gift to write stuff in a snap. During the run of "This Week in Philippine Sports", it usually requires me five hours (Breakdown: Two hours staring at the wall waiting for the light to crack up. One hour playing anything that is playable on the computer. One hour typing all the stuff that came into my mind. 30 minutes reading related news. 20 minutes watching the entire Ashlynn Brooke video that I downloaded prior to writing. 10 minutes trying to finish everything up.) to finish a thousand words or so. THAT IS if I were able to see anything sports within that week. If not, due to a case of heavy day job demand, Xbox demand, or living the life of leisure at some point (or majority) of the week, then I'll have a problem.
So I was there a month ago... and now I'm here... making a mega-post out of what have happened the past month. (I already spent two hours now. We'd better do this.)
ALASKA ACES
How do we start the conversation
without mentioning Tim Cone?
.
.
.
.
(After eight days of
self-deliberation...)
There is no way that we cannot
include the departure of Tim Cone from Alaska if we are going to talk about
this team (by far). Even though there were NO changes from the roster during
that transition, his departure made a huge impact that people immediately
speculated that this Cone-less team of Alaska was headed south. When the games
began, it was way worse than we thought. It's as bad as the lie LA Tenorio made
up when he tried to cover Joel Banal that giving up the triangle was the best thing that happened to the team.
Even when they were under a 50-feet pile of horse crap that first two
conference without coach Tim, nobody thought they were wrong. Now, both of them
are gone from the team. They were there one full season ago.
One Trillio, one Abueva, and a couple
of Moves like Trillio, now we're here...
The Aces are on the top of the
standings.
Again, the ACES are on top of the
standings.
And easily trashed Air21 in the
process during the quarters.
No joke... and the rumor is not true
that the Talk 'n Text Tropang Texters changed their moniker to Aces. It's them.
The team that wears red, white, and black jerseys (I wonder what happened to
their black alternate jerseys... Those unis rock!).
And it's not a joke too that the
younger Trillio, Luigi, is the one running the show. Yes, that young dude who
had a semi successful stint at the D-League until management (his dad) decided
to fiels him in as the head coach. Perhaps Mr. Uytengsu and the fans are not
used to seeing this team play without a system, which happened under Joel
Banal, so they (his dad) chose to field in a guy who is a known student of the
triangle. Better bring the old recipe of success back.
While LA may have loved/hated the
triangle, it still took some roster tweaks to bring the Aces to where are they
now (Did I mention that the Aces are on top of the standings?). First, there
was the draft pick made in heaven (Calvin Abueva), then the "Tampo
Me!" trade (LA gone, Casio and Dondon in). When you have Calvin Abueva, a player who
gives everything - scoring like it's a pick up game, rebounding like an import,
running and hustling like he's on Red Bull, and flopping so badly (In fact,
he's the starting power forward for the PBA Bad Floppers League. Others are
Jason Castro, Chris Ross, Mark Yee, and the immortal Mick Pennisi.) - and
adding two typical Alaska type of players JVee Casio and Dondon Hontiveros - high caliber point guard and a
shooter, who are relatively cheap - to combine with a big man Sonny Thoss, who probably is
the best post player in the league now and a Cyrus Baguio... a wingman, or a hang-man, who has now
evolved into an excellent half court player as well, you now have the same
grand slam roster similar to what they had back in the 90's. No joke.
And let's not forget about the
import. Rob Dozier belonged to this batch of imports where one can easily seperate
the fresh fruits and the rotten ones. While Dozier belonged to the fresh ones,
he probably might be the most delicious fruit in the basket. Like his
teammates, he respected the system Coach Luigi imposed in the team; never mind
being the monster scorer (sorry Eric Dawson) or the flashy dude (sorry Tony
Harris and Billy Ray Bates). Play to your strengths and your team will be
rewarded... and you shall be rewarded. (Justin Williams crying over there in
the corner crying, obviously disagreeing with me.)
Now looking forward, here's what they
got... and of all the teams...
SAN MIG COFFEE MIXERS
I suddenly remembered my personal
wish that ruined my Commissioner's Cup following; a winless Manila Clasico that
would feature two mediocre imports and two individuals that played like an
import that time. Instead, San Mig went ahead to get it's first win not long
after Denzel Bowles got it's mojo slightly back. Whatever that means, I'm sure
the way he played when they got the first win wasn't the same way he played
against Talk n Text the following day. Bowles is not that scary looking and his
demeanor is as cool as heaven, but you can compare him to a solid wall. It's
not moving, but it does hurt when you run into it.
There's your Bowles wall... and Tim
Cone is building his house around Joe DeVance (as the landscape), PJ Simon (as
the roof), Marc Pingris (as the house utilities), Marc Barroca (as the interior
design), the bench (as the assorted furnitures), and Alex Mallari (as the
garage that could either be totally useful or downright useless).
There they were. The great house of
coffee. But it was nearly destroyed as soon as it was built. Why? The
foundation was missing. James Yap.
Physical injury. Social injury.
Emotional injury. He'd be an immortal if he's facing all that and still manage
to drop 20 a game. That would be sick. But he was like Achilles with his entire
body, except his heart, made of ankles. He was practically discounted on
offensive plays in this entire stretch. It was everyone else who were winning
and losing games during that elimination homestretch. If James did pop up, it
will be a bonus.
And pop up he did in their last game
to grab semis.
Finally after a long time since the
discovery of GPS, he dropped 20 that game, and kept that Mixers team afloat
against that pesky Meralco team. The reason they were not pulling away that
game when James was scoring was they went back to the pre-Cone era where
everyone else watched in high definition. Thank heavens that wasn't the story
in the 4th quarter of that game. The everyone else did their part. And they
win.
And now they're here. ..
