Every now and then, a Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) game comes along that feels less like a championship contest and more like a trip through basketball history.

That was exactly what unfolded in Game 6 of the Season 50 Commissioner’s Cup Finals last Sunday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum, where TNT Tropang 5G stayed alive with a 98-90 victory over Barangay Ginebra before 22,731 roaring fans.

The final score suggested a team battle. What transpired, however, felt more like a heavyweight duel between two imports determined to carry their respective franchises on their backs.

TNT import Chris McCullough erupted for 53 points and 22 rebounds, while Ginebra counterpart Justin Brownlee answered with 52 points. Remarkably, both scored more than half of their teams’ total output.

For McCullough, the 53 was the highest-scoring game of his PBA career, surpassing the 51 he scored against Rain or Shine in Game 3 of the 2019 Commissioner’s Cup semifinals. His 22 rebounds also matched his career high, a mark he recorded three times during that same conference’s championship series with San Miguel Beer against TNT.

Brownlee’s 52 points, meanwhile, became the second-highest scoring game of his celebrated PBA career, trailing only the 54 he poured in two nights earlier in Game 5.

Back-to-back 50-point performances by a 38-year-old in the Finals.

If I’m not mistaken, McCullough and Brownlee became the first opposing imports to score at least 50 points each in a PBA Finals game since Game 4 of the 1989 Reinforced Conference title series between San Miguel Beer and Añejo Rum, when Rhum Master import Carlos Briggs exploded for 60 points and SMB counterpart Ennis Whatley countered with 50.

Brownlee also became the first player in more than 37 years to record back-to-back 50-point games in the Finals since Briggs scored at least 52 points in all five games of that 1989 title series, highlighted by an all-time PBA Finals record of 84 points in Game 2.

The year 1989 is remembered mostly for San Miguel Beer’s Grand Slam after beating Añejo and Benjie Paras becoming the only player in league history to win Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player honors in the same season.

Lost in time is the brilliance of Briggs.

The 5-foot-11 import averaged a staggering 62.1 points in 24 games, still the highest scoring average ever recorded in a conference.

Even Swift’s Tony Harris averaged “only” 60.7 points in 23 games during that same conference, despite scoring the league-record 105 points against Ginebra in Iloilo City. Michael Hackett’s famous 103-point game in 1985 came during a conference in which he averaged “only” 50.5 points.

Briggs also scored 89 points in a game, still the fourth-highest single-game output in league history, and led the conference in steals at 3.2 per game. He was prolific on both ends of the floor.

Unfortunately, he never led Añejo to a championship or prevented San Miguel’s Grand Slam, something Brownlee has done many times, and for reasons many still wonder about, Briggs never returned to the PBA after that historic conference.

Watching Brownlee and McCullough trade haymakers in Games 5 and 6 brought back memories of Briggs, even Hackett and Harris, and an era when extraordinary imports seemed to arrive every conference.

Today, such performances happen once in a blue moon.

Glad to have been a witness to both eras in my lifetime.