Players-only meetings spark Meralco

A series of players-only meetings turned Meralco’s fortune around after a shaky start in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Philippine Cup.

Veterans like Chris Banchero, skipper Raymond Almazan, Cliff Hodge and Allein Maliksi gathered the Bolts to get their acts together, eventually bearing fruit with a best-of-seven semifinals appearance.

“It’s no secret we got off to a slow start. But we have a bunch of vets here, we know that a slow start isn’t the end of the conference,” Banchero said.

“We want to play our best basketball as we go into the playoffs and I think we’re doing it right now.”

Meralco set up an eighth playoff showdown against Barangay Ginebra San Miguel since 2016 after sweeping the Best Player of the Conference frontrunner Robert Bolick-led NLEX in the best-of-three quarterfinals.

Game 1 is set Friday at the Mall of Asia Arena.

The Bolts had to climb their way up from the bottom of the standings to secure a playoff seat.

Meralco started its all-Filipino campaign 1-3 and had to play must-win games after going down 3-5 in the standings.

But the Bolts rallied to hurdle their last three elimination round assignments capped by a morale-boosting upset over defending champion San Miguel Beer to deny it an 11-game sweep and securing a quarters spot.

Meralco accomplished the improbable despite losing top guard Aaron Black to a season-ending knee injury.

“As an organization it’s super hard to get into the semifinals. I don’t think people realize how hard it is to be consistent. If you look at our last eight conferences we made six semis, that one conference New (Chris Newsome) wasn’t there and last conference we got knocked out by Phoenix,” Bolts coach Luigi Trillo said.