BARANGAY Ginebra, not San Miguel Beer, is the team to beat in the coming 2017-2018 Philippine Basketball Association Philippine Cup. And the dark horse team is TNT KaTropa because Kelly Williams is playing like an import again.
Okay, I’ll concede that Ginebra and San Miguel Beer will probably be in the Finals of the Philippine Cup March next year but Ginebra is capable of ending the Beermen’s three-year string of All-Filipino championships.
All eyes may be on defending champion San Miguel Beer when the All-Filipino starts Dec. 17 but even coach Leo Austria will be the first to admit that his team has no answer to the massive Ginebra frontline featuring the two-headed monster team-up of Greg Slaughter and Japeth Aguilar.
Austria said everyone saw what Slaughter and Aguilar can do while playing together. It’s a combination of two skilled big men who can score from inside or outside and who are capable of dominating the game at both ends of the floor.
Ginebra, with Aguilar and Slaughter on the floor, is the only team which has the size to contain SMB behemoth June Mar Fajardo.
This was only too evident in their last meeting when the Gin Kings trounced the Beermen 104-84 in the quarterfinals of the past Governors’ Cup.
Last year SMB only defeated Ginebra in the All-Filipino Finals because Slaughter was recovering from an ACL injury. Slaughter returned in the Governors’ Cup and the Gin Kings have been unstoppable since.
Slaughter eventually won the tournament’s Best Player of the Conference award even as Ginebra won the championship.
How worried are the Beermen? They started a league-wide controversy to bring in Christian Standhardinger and the guy won’t even be available to play for them until the league’s second conference which means they should probably kiss the All-Filipino crown goodbye.
Slaughter and Aguilar is just the start of the Beermen’s problems when they face the Gin Kings. There are the young stars led by Scottie Thompson and Kevin Ferrer. There’s LA Tenorio who takes particular pleasure in tormenting San Miguel ever since they traded him away to the Alaska Aces back in 2008.
And of course there’s Tim Cone with his 20 league championships orchestrating everything.
Cone is probably not even gunning for just PBA championships anymore. Remember he won a Grand Slam with the Alaska Aces in 1996. Then he won another Grand Slam with San Mig Coffee in 2014. You think the prospect of a Barangay Ginebra Grand Slam hasn’t crossed his mind?
It’s probably SMB and Ginebra in the Finals with Ginebra likely taking the crown home. But if either Ginebra or SMB falter then TNT is the likeliest to go to the PBA Finals in their place.
TNT has as formidable a lineup as SMB or Ginebra. But it has fallen by the wayside time and again these past conferences because the team has failed to maximize the potential of its star-studded bench.
If coach Nash Racela can do this and also learn to budget Williams’ playing time so that he’s in beast mode when the game is on the line then TNT is capable of upsetting both Ginebra and San Miguel Beer.