Stanley Pringle may no longer be logging minutes as heavy as he’s done in the past, but the veteran guard remains so valuable for Barangay Ginebra.
Proof of this was Game 1 of the PBA Governors’ Cup Finals Sunday night, where he produced nine of his 11 points in the fourth quarter alone to help the Kings pull away towards the 102-90 victory over TNT.
The former scoring champion led the bench mob and Coach Tim Cone couldn’t be any more thankful for the luxury of having him come off the bench.
But the owner of 25 league championships doesn’t look at him as a bench player as he and the club continue to hold him in high regard.
“We don’t think of him as being a bench player. He’s a starter coming off the bench,” said Cone during the postgame presser at the Willie Caballes Press Hall of the SMART Araneta Coliseum.
“That’s the way we see and view him.”
It was Pringle’s best game in quite a while, or since scoring 10 points against, coincidentally, the Tropang Giga albeit in a 114-105 defeat in the last match of the elimination round last March 17 at the Philsports Arena.
And he definitely couldn’t have chosen a more opportune time to deliver than in the Finals opener, which was witnessed live by 11,580 fans.
All of his points in the final period came from beyond the arc, two of which he made to help establish an 87-69 lead as the crowd darlings began to break away from their long-time corporate rivals en route to the early series lead.
“When they went to zone there at the end, he stepped up and made some big shots and big plays. That’s just Stanley we’ve all known from the past,” Cone said. “He’s slowly but surely getting back to that level.”
Pringle is still in the process of regaining his old form following three major knee injuries, thus Ginebra’s cautious approach on his situation. He’s only been playing for an average of 20.1 minutes this conference.
But Game 1 was indeed yet another proof that the Kings will always get something from him despite limited minutes, much to Cone’s delight.
“We don’t want to get him in a situation where we overplay him and he goes down because he’s too valuable for us. So we try to keep his minutes under a certain amount and try to get the best of what we can out of him,” he said.
“Having him come off the bench is an incredible luxury. We are still very careful with Stanley because he’s such a great player,” the 65-year-old bench tactician furthered.
“We don’t want to break him down.”
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The 2023 PBA Governors Cup Finals is live-streamed on SMART Sports.
