PBA slams door on listless Macau

The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) has seen enough of guest team Macau’s mediocrity.

League commissioner Willie Marcial said the Giant Pandas will play in the PBA for the last time on Friday at the close of their Season 50 Governors’ Cup campaign but won’t be invited to participate in the future.

“No more,” Marcial said as the league shuts its doors on Macau.

The Giant Pandas have been the whipping boys of the league in its two-conference stint and are currently on their worst stretch since the resumption of the season-ending tournament.

Just six days after being the recipient of the PBA’s worst beating in history at 60 points, Macau almost reset it if not for late baskets in a 55-point drubbing from defending champion TNT, 87-142, on Tuesday at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium.

It was the Giant Pandas’ fifth straight defeat that pulled them down deeper at the cellar with a 2-9 card with just a game left to end their misery.

The winning margin was the Tropang 5Gs biggest in franchise history and the most lopsided victory in head coach Chot Reyes’ career.

Macau holds two of the three biggest losing margins in PBA history after its earlier 138-78 crushing at the hands of NLEX on 7 October in the conference’s resumption after a nearly two-month break. It broke Rain or Shine’s 56-point beating of Blackwater, 151-95, last 31 March during the Commissioner’s Cup.

TNT, for a time, looked ready to bury Macau by more than 60 after Rey Nambatac nailed a three-pointer for a 132-71 count with 4:35 left in the game.