ORDER RESTORED: Rondae roars, puts Tropang Giga on brink

After a late-game blunder in Game 3, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson bounced back, delivering a masterful performance to lift TNT Tropang Giga to an 81-79 win over Rain or Shine in Game 4 of their Philippine Basketball Association Governors’ Cup yesterday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

Hollis-Jefferson was simply impressive as he tallied 23 points and 19 rebounds with five assists, five steals and five blocks for the Tropang Giga, who moved one win away from reaching the best-of-seven finals series.

If TNT bags the clincher on Friday, they will face the survivor in the other semifinal battle between Barangay Ginebra and San Miguel Beer.

The Kings and the Beermen are playing at press time with the former holding a 2-1 lead.

Hollis-Jefferson, the reigning Best Import awardee, played like a man on a mission crushing the Rain or Shine defense with an impressive all-around performance that more than made up for his late-game miscue in Game 3 in which he failed to bury the game-winning layup.

“At the end of the day, it’s basketball. You’re going to make some and miss some,” Hollis-Jefferson said, giving credit to the entire TNT crew like Rey Nambatac and Calvin Oftana.

“I wanted to make sure we came out with the win. At the end of the day, it wasn’t just me rebounding and scoring. I got to give credit to Rey for hitting a big shot, Calvin for hitting a big shot.”

Tied at 79 with 37 seconds in the fourth quarter, Hollis-Jefferson went straight into the heart of the Rain or Shine defense and flushed a powerful one-handed dunk to secure the lead, 81-79.

Then, the Jordanian-American import swatted away Jhonard Clarito’s layup with 18.5 ticks left before cleverly intentionally missing his two free throws in the final 1.1 seconds to seal the victory.

Tropang Giga head coach Chot Reyes said their defense was the main factor for getting Game 4. After all, they had nine blocks compared to the Elasto Painters’ three.

“We were not hitting our shots. We were shooting on a very low clip but I told them that’s fine because we were playing good defense,” Reyes said.

“It was a completely defensive ballgame. We just had made a couple more stops than they did.”

Helping Hollis-Jefferson offensively was Nambatac, who also had a double-double night with 15 points and 11 rebounds while Oftana almost had a double-double of his own with 15 points and nine rebounds for TNT, which restored order after losing Game 3, 109-110, in nail-biting fashion.

Aaron Fuller also had a double-double game of 22 points and 18 rebounds for Rain or Shine.

The scores:

TNT (81) — Hollis-Jefferson 23, Nambatac 15, Oftana 15, Castro 9, Erram 8, Williams 5, Pogoy 4, Aurin 4, Khobuntin 0.

RAIN OR SHINE (79) — Fuller 22, Santillan 11, Norwood 8, Clarito 8, Mamuyac 6, Nocum 6, Belga 6, Caracut 4, Lemetti 3, Asistio 3, Datu 2.

QUARTERS: 18-22, 39-39, 63-59, 81-79.