Arvin Tolentino and the rest of NorthPort remain defiant despite the gloomy state of their campaign in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Commissioner’s Cup semifinals against powerhouse Barangay Ginebra.
Down 0-3 in the best-of-seven series, the Batang Pier have their backs against the wall and will need to play perfect basketball starting today in Game 4 to turn things around.
“We’re just really trying to be positive. We’ve actually overachieved this conference. Staying positive and sticking to each other. (But) it’s really a hard thing to do now being down 0-3,” Tolentino said after NorthPort suffered a 100-127 blowout loss to the Kings in Game 3 last Sunday.
“I can’t say we’re good right now because we’re down. But for the morale of the team, I would say is still okay.”
The Batang Pier came into the playoffs as the top seed and looked poised to give Ginebra a run for its money.
After all, NorthPort beat the Kings in the elimination round on its way to an elims best 9-3 win-loss record. The Batang Pier also had a long rest and prepared for the semis with an intact lineup compared to the Kings, who had five key players and their head coach Tim Cone out for a tour of duty with Gilas Pilipinas.
But Ginebra still dominated the first three games with an average winning margin of 20.6 points.
“We all know that Ginebra is a very experienced team. They have coach Tim Cone and they have five national team players and they’ve been together for a long time,” the Best Player of the Conference frontrunner said.
“I guess, after beating them in the eliminations they were able to adjust in the playoffs. Until now we’re looking for answers. A lot of things are not clicking.”
“Good thing we have one more chance on Wednesday. Again, we are new (playing) in the semifinals but that’s not an excuse.”
Tolentino admits that getting manhandled by Ginebra is unexpected — a surprise even.
“Actually, our confidence was high coming into the series since we have beaten them in the elims. So, we thought we had that mental advantage,” the 29-year-old forward said.