Manila Clasico Running Diary

6:20 PM - First thing in the running diary and I'm putting Renaldo Balkman's tattoo in the eyelids in it. What the hell is wrong with me???? Also, we are witnessing Petronovela Season 2 Episode 2 in the midst of this San Mig Coffee and Barangay Ginebra rivalry match. What the hell is wrong with everyone????

6:28 - This one is awfully taking too long... makes me think who else put tattoos in their eyelids. WHO ELSE PUT TATTOOS IN THEIR EYELIDS.

6:31 - Funny tweet: wushuuu... kung talagang bati na nga kayo..... KISS NGA!!! #balkman #santos

6:33 - Finally! We're getting started. Makes me remember my former birthday wish of having this match with both teams winless. Darn!

6:36 - First basket belongs to Ginebra with an LA-Ellis alley-oop. Lob city Philippines?

6:38 - Back to back baskets from James Yap. Meanwhile...

6:39 - Mark Caguioa being BOOED??? Wow. That's a first. Another first is Billy Mamaril going 3/3 in the field to start his game. Streak shooting.

6:42 - First timeout called and finally the crowd stopped screaming. Are we watching an Ateneo-La Salle game?

6:48 - Kerby Raymundo is now in the game. GOOD GOD KERBY RAYMUNDO IS IN THE GAME! Did I mention that Kerby Raymundo is now in the game?

6:51 - After starting 2/2, James missed his next four in the field. So much for a good start.

6:55 - 24-17 after one in favor of Ginebra. 84% of Ginebra fans are wishing upon a star that some volcano rise up the floor of Araneta Coliseum so that the game would stop and give Ginebra their second win.

7:00 - It's time to play a game called "What is Alfrancis Chua Thinking?" This one, guess what coach Alfrancis Chua is thinking in matching up 5'5" Rob Labagala to 6'3" Alex Mallari. Winners will get a free 8 hours of sleep due to confusion.

7:06 - Coach Tim Cone was pretty generous enough to send in Mark Barroca to match up with Rob Labagala. Yes... that's what I think.

7:10 - Billy Mamaril is making a living out of that mid-range shot. He's now 5/5 and get this lead up to 10. GINEBRA UP BY 10... MY GOD!!! Please spare us global warming.

7:13 - Ellis completing a chase down block and Bowles blowing a point blank shot and Ginebra running like hopeless thieves. Looks like a switch of brand drinks happened during pre-game.

7:18 - End of second quarter. This is the score. Hold on folks. 48-35 in favor of Ginebra. 48-35 IN FAVOR OF GINEBRA. MY GOODNESS!!!

7:26 - It's time to open that bag of chicharon!!!! CRRRRUUUUNNNCCCCHHHH!

7:36 - Second half time with Ginebra executing a pick and roll. Fact: no matter who the coach is, Ginebra executes the most lethal pick and roll play.

7:39 - Jolas after a Tenorio miss: minsan kinakalawang talaga kamay mo pag matagal kang hindi tumitira. THANK YOU!

7:39 - James with a three from Farmer's Plaza. Maybe SMC needs broken half court plays in order to score instead of executing. Now they're down by 10...

7:41 - ...and now down by 8. If this goes down to 6, uh oh...

7:44 - SMC down by 12 after a Mamaril midrange, which makes him 6/6. Imagine if Billy didn't make five of those, then we have a ballgame. So if Ginebra wins... MY GOODNESS BILLY MAMARIL WAS THE DIFFERENCE!!!

7:50 - An evidence the basketball gods are favoring Ginebra: four SMC and Macklin in the paint. Everyone goes up after the missed shot. Guess who got the basketball.

7:54 - 67-58 for Ginebra after the third. Every Ginebra fan is wishing that the game stops now!

7:57 - 67-60 with 11:12 remaining. Again, EVERY Ginebra fan is wishing the game stops now.

7:59 - Usual Alfrancis Chua Ginebra problem: LA started a fastbreak but no one ran with him.  I thought they were run and gun?

8:02 - BREAKING NEWS: There was no GSM Blue found inside the cooler of Ginebra, thus that electrifying fastbreak by the kings.

8:05 - 75-62 for Ginebra with 6:35 left in the game. Tim Cone was giving Barroca a mouthful as it fades to commercial. He should've screamed at their goal instead for rolling their shots out.

8:12 - SMC managed a 10-5 run with under four minutes in the game. One last push for SMC and one more plead to their ring to stop puking the ball out of their goal.

8:14 - By the way, where is James Yap????

8:17 - LAST TWOOOOOOO MINUTES!!!! 82-72 Ginebra. Ginebra fans are really praying hard right now.

8:18 - Oh, there was James Yap. And-one! Five point ball game... uh oh...

8:20 - Mark Caguioa with a three! I am loving his consistency in scoring after winning that MVP. While we're at it, special mention to Gary David.

8:22 - A trio of events... Mark Caguioa's happened to be the biggest. He has now 25. He and Gary David averages more points than Justin Williams.

8:26 - SMC still fighting for dear life. If only those threes were getting in instead of getting out, then it won't lead to Ginebra fans still feeling tense as of this moment (cut to Ginebra fans sweating in prayers).

8:29 - Buzzer sounds. Ginebra wins. Fans can now breathe.

8:30 - LA posting assists numbers like he is Rajon Rondo. But he is gunshy as... as... as... LA Tenorio?

This Week in Philippine Sports: Belga Knows Fakes.

I know I'm quite a loser of a sports fan because I missed a "thriller" of a volleyball game between DLSU (Wensh Dear!) and Ateneo (Greta Beybe!). But with a personal purpose in life that happened to coincide with that day would make one feel just okay (Translation: I just got my long awaited phone bitches!). So forgive me if I concentrate on just one game. But this one game deserves a lot of things to talk about. Let's get it on!

- The science behind Beau Belga's shot fake is close to inexistence. This is one of the moments where you're watching ROS on TV with your friends, see them run their high-low play, see Belga receive the ball at the top of the key, and then suddenly execute a betting game with your friends in a split second and see if Beau will shoot or fake and drive. That bears an almost equal probability as a toss coin. His starting form for a jump shot and a shot fake is really the same; heck it's even hard to identify it when you play and replay AND replay the game tapes! The bad news is, when you don't go for the shot fake and just let him shoot, he's as dead eye as his teammate Jeff Chan. So I pretty much understand where Vernon Macklin was going through when he kept biting those shot fakes over and over again.

- The next painful thing after that bait, he'll do Jason Castro moves... ALL THE TIME! Last night? He kicked out that ball to an open teammate for a three. He drove hard to the basket getting lay-ups, fouls, and and-ones. He drops it to another teammate inside after making help defenders commit. HE'S MAKING HELP DEFENDERS COMMIT TO HIM! And he's not even a third-option-on-offense type of guy. Where is this world going?

- This makes me think that the line "What a Jason Castro move by Beau Belga!!" will evolve from being witty to "Holy kamote! The opposing team is in serious trouble."

- When Ginebra was stacking losses like small empty balikbayan boxes, I always thought that one part of the problem was LA Tenorio passing too much. He passes up open makeable three pointers for drives headed to nothingtown, and kick it out again, leaving his teammates clueless on what to do with the ball. The worst part is he'll pass up those threes with defenders still four or five feet away, giving defenders a better chance to stop his dribble penetration. Even though he was going like 3-8s or 2-9s from the field I still believed he shot less. Last night's game proved me right. He didn't pass those open threes and made them. I believe he made double digit points and shot well last night... and almost won!

- Now why did they lose? Free throws. It will not lead to those tense moments down the stretch had they made those free throws. If only Macklin had made a couple more and Mark Caguioa nailing those three straight free throws instead of missing then, then we might have ourselves a tied 2-4 Manila Clasico.

- Speaking of those tense moments down the stretch, this is where chemistry kicks in. That play where Kerby Raymundo tossed the ball over to the table officials, it was easy to decipher... Kerby thought LA was already running ahead when he passed that ball. Apparently LA was just standing there waiting for him. Kerby let his instinct rule over his senses, thinking he was passing the ball to Roger Yap. It resulted to turnover. Kerby then got a lot of unnecessary heat for that one, throwing his relatively great game out of the door.

- While we're at it, how LA and Macklin playing good music together is such a pleasure to watch. Like how many alley-oops did they made? 41?

- And how many fouls was called out of those 41 alley-oops? 138! Goodness! Those phantom fouls was close to unbearable. It made me wanna pluck those whistles down to the referees' throats. If the commissioner's office decides to review the calls of the entire game, those three refs will be suspended by next game day.

- Last thing... ROS is doing this winning thing minus Jeff Chan. Once Jeff returns, this would be interesting.

See you next week!


follow me: @sirjaydelacruz
email me: jhaydelacruz46915@gmail.com

An Unexpected PBA News Summit

Question: Does the PBA have lousy referees?

• If you think FIBA referees are generally lousy, then for sure you'd answer "yes". PBA refs are like FIBA refs; when they're in the mood to call a foul for touching jerseys, they'd call a foul. Same way when they're not in a mood to call a foul to a 12 to six elbow on the no-charge zone, they wouldn't whistle. A player wouldn't know what those refs had for lunch or what did their wives told them before going to work that would affect their perspective on the game. Like my many several tweets during the SE Live Tweets, we just don't get the PBA refs sometimes (actually, make that ALL THE TIME).

Question: Were the Barako Bull Energy capable of winning that series?

• There were only three basketball players in that team during that series; Gabe Freeman, Danny Seigle, and Willie Miller. The rest were all aspiring mixed martial artists. If you put three basketball players against... uhm... uh... <whispered to my sidekick "how many basketball players does TNT have?">... <whispered again "just subtract one?">... <finally "okay thanks">... a total roster of basketball players except for one, there is no way you'd win the series. Perhaps the only reason TNT lost those games is one, they didn't pass that fucking basketball to Gilbert Lao, and two, TNT forgot in one game that Danny Seigle has the ability to stop his aging process while he's injured which practically makes him like he's 32-33 years old.

Question: Since tanking is such a big trend in the NBA right now, did Ginebra tanked?

• Did Jackson Vroman tanked? Looks like he did. Go back to the moment were Ginebra was pondering of letting Chris Alexander go or stay. The Kris Aquino of the team (Mark Caguioa) said he wanted Alexander to stay, even though he looked terrible at the start and was working his way to optimum potential as the games go. Imagine if Alexander was with the team and Kris Aquino of Ginebra has that eye injury (Incidentally, the dude that is somehow involved in Caguioa's injury is Kris Aquino's ex-husband James Yap! Does James Yap just wanted to destroy everything Kris Aquino related? My crazy ass mind.), I bet his ass wouldn't itch to get in to the game with one good eye the way he was begging for a miracle to get into this series with Vroman as their import. Those lousy passes and fouls in Games two and four? Hell yeah... tanking, baby!

Question: What do you think of the B-Meg-Talk 'n Text Finals series?

• Talk 'n Text are the same old group of BFFs who do nothing but winning. Same old playing styles; Jimmy and Larry can't do defense, Jason Castro plays like an Olympian, Rich Alvarez plays like he's born to annoy key players, everybody else fills in the needed roles... aaaaaaand Gilbert Lao. Same old playing styles for B-Meg too; Josh still makes stupid decisions, James Yap and PJ Simon will go scoreless together and will explode together, Marc Pingris will eat a lot of 1-UPs so he could die-dive for the ball, everyone else obeying coach Tim Cone... aaaaaaaand the towel dude (Watch a B-Meg game live and check that small dude on the corner of their bench who wackily demonstrate defensive schemes/stance/whatever he wanted to tell the players. He's fun to watch, especially when they're down big and you don't wanna see them mess up more, you'll end up watching him).

Question: With that being said, then this will quite be a coaches' series?

• Coach Chot Reyes and Coach Tim Cone for the Philippine Basketball's Most Bad-ass Coach Heavyweight Title match-up. 

Question: With Ginebra Jackson Vroman tanked in the Semis, and now with Petron finally getting Marcio Lassiter...

• Like I said in The Park Games, the only equivalent value of Marcio Lassiter in his team for Petron is Arwind Santos. That is a peso-to-peso deal. Now you have a deal of Celino Cruz-Marcio in exchange for Rabeh-Rey-Lordy. Powerade gave away a full peso and 25 centavos and got in return four 25 centavos, a couple 10 centavos, and a 5 centavo coin (Go figure out their values. I'm not sharing mine. If you're badly interested with my values for them, go follow me and tweet me @sirjhaydelacruz). Put those money in real life situation and chances are you'll lose some of the coins in that 4-2-1 coin combination. Petron wouldn't lose that peso for sure. So at the end of the day, you may have Petron having a full peso in it's pocket while Powerade lost 50 centavos of it down the road (The value maybe coming from Rabeh applying some Midas' Touch on his shooting and torn ACL, or whatever they can squeeze out of Lordy, or......... that's it).

Question: Have you answered any of the question?

• Did I?

The "If Only..." Game

Have you seen the movie "If Only" by Jennifer Love Hewitt? In the story, dude got a second chance to make up for all the things JLH did which he took for granted. (It's pretty obvious I'm not here to give the plot of the film. You could always IMDB the film or piratebay it. But if you've seen the movie, you would definitely agree that one Gerald Anderson-Kim Chiu telenovela made a rip-off of it, right?)

Now, if one of us had the gift of recreating and replaying certain things, of course we'd definitely take that chance to make things better. And as we witnessed four ultra competitive games in the PBA Commissioner's Cup Semifinals, I know many of us are saying "...sana ganito si player x para mas makashoot sya..." or "... sana binantayan nya si player y para di nakashoot yung kalaban..." The analysis of you-should-do-this-and-you-should-do-that. So in relation to the movie that my stupid brain just picked-up and to the ongoing second version of PBA Semis Non-Stop, let's play the IF ONLY game!

• If only Jackson VRRRRRoman made that pass properly to Dylan Ababou in the final minute of the Game 2, his idea would've materialized. Otherwise - yes, I somehow will agree on everybody else - he should've taken the shot.
• If only there was a whatever-you-can-give-to-a-guy-who-sacrifices-his-dear-life-in-the-name-of-rebounds-and-hustle-play award, they should hand it to Marc Pingris right now.
• If only Jayjay Helterbrand is shooting like a 2009 MVP right now.
• If only John Wilson releases his jump shot a second and a half earlier before his wide open looks become dark.
• If only Mark Caguioa didn't broke his eye (Many believe he is the man that will defy the series. I believe in it, and somehow B-Meg is just one win away from proving it right.)
• If only Talk 'n Text have five more Ranidel de Ocampos in their line-up, in order to match the panggugulang of Barako Bull's veterans.
• If only Talk 'n Text can find that tranquilizer that they shot on Gabe Freeman on Game 2 that neutralized his presence in the game for two more times.
• If only Barako Bull (Ronald Tubid?) hadn't made Kelly Williams whack himself in the face back in Game 1.
• If only Talk 'n Text can finally figure out the way to beat Barako Bull down to hell is to run.
• If only Barako Bull can find the fountain of youth and mix it with their energy drink before Talk 'n Text decides to run.

... and probably the most important IF ONLY of all the past four games held...

• If only Talk 'n Text passed the effing basketball to Gilbert Lao, they should have won Game 1. Follow me on Twitter (@sirjhaydelacruz) and I will tell you all the sciences involved in this declaration.