Games today:
(Mall of Asia Arena)
5:15 p.m. — Meralco vs TNT
7:30 p.m. — Ginebra vs Rain or Shine
Defending champion TNT and Meralco figure in a whole new semifinals showdown.
For the Tropang 5G, Game 3 gauges how fast they can move on from losing their super import Bol Bol to an unfortunate injury.
The Bolts, on the other hand, try to adjust against an opponent that remains dangerous despite missing its primary weapons and now has a new reinforcement in Malick Diouf.
These concerns will be answered when the two teams meet to break a 1-1 standoff in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Season 50 Commissioner’s Cup best-of-seven semis series Sunday at the Mall of Asia Arena.
Diouf, a 6-foot-11 University of the Philippines product, was tapped as an emergency replacement for 7-foot-3 Bol but is still waiting for the green light to play pending the submission of necessary documents.
Bol went down with a conference-ending left Achilles tendon tear in a 76-87 Game 2 loss last Friday at the same Pasay venue.
“Now, we have to find a way to beat somebody thrice. Those are the cards that we’re dealt with and there’s nothing we can do about it,” a defiant TNT head coach Chot Reyes said.
Bolts mentor Luigi Trillo, meanwhile, is more focused on taking advantage of the situation rather than worrying about things he has no control over.
“We can’t control right now what they’re doing, but what we can control is back to the drawing board a little bit, see what they do, clean up a little bit of the mistakes and then maybe once we find out about that (replacement) import then we can talk about it,” Trillo said.
“But I think it will be a game-time decision on how to defend that guy.”
Meralco top guard Chris Newsome echoes Trillo’s mindset.
“For us, it’s just about staying focused. Even though we had a gameplan with Bol, that doesn’t change for us,” he said.
“We’re still going to have a gameplan for the locals, for whoever comes in next, and then it’s really up to us to execute it properly. And I think that was the difference between what happened in Game 1… our execution faltered. We could have had that game,” Newsome added.
“But if we focus more on execution and the little details of what would make us successful, then we’ll be successful, regardless of whether they have an import or not.”
Meanwhile, Barangay Ginebra and Rain or Shine are also looking to break a stalemate in their own semifinal pairing.
The Kings found a way to correct the mistakes of their series-opening loss as they found a way to stave off the Elasto Painter’s furious fourth quarter fight back to tie the series with a 109-101 Game 2 win last Friday.
“Well, yeah, we controlled the game until about the last six minutes of the game and then it was all them. Yeah, we got off well. I think we, honestly, we made some bad coaching decisions in Game 1 in terms of preparation and how we didn’t read what Rain or Shine was going to do to us,” Ginebra head coach Tim Cone said.
“I thought that we did a better job in Game 2 coming out with a better game plan and a better plan of attack and that kind of got us going a little bit more.”
In Game 3, Cone wants a change of pace as the first two games were played in the kind of fast-paced tempo dictated by Rain or Shine.
“Well, it really comes down to the, as I mentioned earlier, the energy war, you know. We don’t want to play at a breakneck pace and wear our guys down. You know, our guys play more minutes than their guys do, so we have to be conscious of that, and that dictates a lot of what our game plan is all about,” he said about Ginebra’s short rotation compared to the run-and-gun style of the Elasto Painters with more players seeing court time.