Coach Tim Cone admitted that the tight schedule caught up to Ginebra after suffering a brutal beatdown at the hands of Magnolia, Sunday night.
The Kings witnessed the end of their unbeaten PBA Governors’ Cup start following a 118-88 loss in the most lopsided Manila Clasico result since the 2003 Invitationals, per league stats chief Fidel Mangonon III.
“I hate to admit this, but we really were a tired team tonight,” he told reporters moments after the match – witnessed by 11,121 fans – at the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay. “And you can see it in our body language, our lack of activity.
“We just weren’t getting up and down the floor, we weren’t moving without the ball. The ball was moving slowly tonight, And we were late on all of our rotations,” added the champion bench tactician.
“It was a perfect storm – we were tired, and we played a team that’s desperate, and has new life with an import… And just came out and they out-physicaled [sic] us and out-energized us. Just turned into a really embarrassing night.”
Sunday night marked Ginebra’s fourth game in eight days. The reigning champs debuted last February 5, beating Rain or Shine, 116-108.
They then beat NLEX through a 114-11 escape three nights later, before dealing NorthPort a 115-100 romp just last Friday to go 3-0 to open the tourney.
Cone admitted that he was expecting fatigue to catch up to his men. Unfortunately, though, it took place at a game as big as the Clasico.
“You don’t want that on a Manila Clasico night, when the crowd’s watching, but we just … The schedule just caught up to us, and I was waiting for this to happen in one of the games,” said Cone.
The 65-year-old mentor admitted that there’s disappointment in coming up short of stretching their unbeaten run to four. Still, he feels proud of the way Ginebra finished the week – they’re at no. 5 right now with a 3-1 card.
“You know, before this stretch started, I felt that if we could get to 3-1 or 2-2, I’d be happy. But once we got to 3-0, we were greedy. We wanted to get to 4-0. So not getting to 4-0 with a chance to get 4-0, now it’s disappointing,” he said.
“But overall, for the whole week, I’m proud of our guys, coming off the championship. But tonight was truly our first hangover night.
“I mean, we just didn’t have it. I tried hard … [But] We don’t ever want to use the schedule or things like that as an excuse, but we do know the value of moving on and moving forward. So we’ll move forward,” added Cone.
Furthermore, Cone was glad to see the Barangay ‘getting a little bit healthy’ with Christian Standhardinger back in action after missing their last two games due to a knee injury. He had 17 points, 11 rebounds, and five assists in 40 minutes.
“It was good to have Christian back tonight, and he played extended minutes so that was very encouraging. LA played a little bit of extended minutes tonight, too. Hopefully, we’re getting a little bit healthy as we wait for Japeth to return,” said Cone.
“But like I said, we’re just gonna put it behind us and move forward. It was painful, no doubt about it. It was painful, and it was really an ouch moment,” he continued.
“But, like I said, a perfect storm of negatives. I think Coach Kirk [Collier] put it really well when he said that. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Again, like I said, we’ll just move forward.”
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